Two young women lost everything they had, when a bowling alley caught fire last week.
The massive fire in De Soto not only destroyed the business but also the apartments on the second floor.
The Ball Creek Bowling alley was destroyed in a matter of minutes Wednesday night. But two teen girls inside barely managed to escape with their lives.
"It all happened so quickly, in a matter of 10 minutes it was all gone," said Hailey Whitaker, who lived above the Bowling Alley.
As they sort through the ashes of their former life, there are pieces of charred debris they recognize.
"That's our couch and that's my mattress and bedspring," said Whitaker.
Wednesday night Whitaker and her roommate Brittany Brandt watched their studio apartment burn to the ground in a violent fire. The only warning- a loud boom moments before the smoke rose.
"We felt it so hard. All I could hear were just roaring flames," said Whitaker.
"We just grabbed our purses, grabbed my keys and we had to get out of there immediately. or it was all going to go down so quickly that we didn't have time," said Brandt.
"All I could think of was a few minutes later and this could've been a tragic story. I could've lost my daughter," said Chrystal Goodman, Brandt's mother.
The girls say their apartment did have a working smoke detector but they removed the batteries and forgot to replace them weeks ago.
The De Soto Fire department has said the fire sprinklers and other smoke detectors were not working at all. Something the girls don't want to believe, in part, because they trust the man who installed the system.
"I know there are some people who think there weren't smoke detectors in the building but I know for a fact there was, because my step dad installed them," said Whitaker.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. In the meantime these teens begin the task of rebuilding a life they had just begun.
"It's hard to wake up every morning and you think that you're in your bed but you're not... and it hits me every moment for a split second," said Whitaker.
The girls have set up gofund me accounts to help raise money to replace everything they lost.
Brittany Brandt's Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/ewkk6nw4?rcid=5e04af99bd2142818ff9823d2119f83d
Hailey Whitaker's Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/c8kcgzrg
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