‘I’M VERY LUCKY’
Grace Dilger in what remains of her bedroom.
Red Bank Regional freshman Grace Dilger awoke early this morning to find her bed on fire.
She’d gone to sleep with a heating pad to ease a sore back from playing lacrosse. But the pad overheated and caught fire. As she slept, the fire spread to a nightstand and lamp.
“I woke up because I felt flames next to me,” the 15-year-old tells redbankgreen, pointing to her now-bandaged left forearm.
She ran to her 18-year-old brother Brian’s room but couldn’t immediately wake him up, she says. So she ran back to try to smother the fire with a blanket, and found “the length of the bed” in flames.
Brian soon came in to help her, she says.
According to the Asbury Park Press, the fire was reported at 3:56a, and it took 50 firefighters from Little Silver, Red Bank, Oceanport and Shrewsbury half an hour to put it out.
Though the blaze was limited to Grace’s bedroom, the second floor of the family’s Cape Cod on Rumson Place in Little Silver was extensively damaged by smoke and water.
Grace and Brian were treated for minor burns at Riverview Medical Center and released this morning.
“I’m very lucky,” she says.