SUMTER, S.C. — Parents and kids in Sumter say they’re feeling grateful the day after everyone walked away safely after a fire that consumed a daycare center.
The blaze started at The Club House Learning Center on Wilson Hall Road a little before 1 p.m. on Thursday, with 47 children and six staff members inside.
“Fear set in and I dropped to the concrete and prayed. That’s all you can do,” said Rebecca Rabon, describing the moment when she heard that the daycare building was on fire with her son and daughter inside.
Rabon said she’s grateful for the community members who helped five-year-old Aiden and 5-month-old Everleigh get out safely.
“Thank you to all of them,” Rabon said, standing next to fellow mother Morgan DeCosta. “Like, thank you. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think we would have had the outcome that we did.”
DeCosta said her faith in God and her community is strengthened knowing her 4-year-old son Tatum came home safely.
“We’re both praying mamas. So since Tatum has been at this daycare every morning I have prayed for his protection on the way to school, and every night I pray for his protection. She does the same for both of her babies daily…it was just a moment for me where God showed me yet again in another season how absolute in control He is and how faithful He is,” DeCosta shared. “Forty-seven kids and six teachers, that was God. You can’t convince me otherwise.”
Elisabeth Denil was one of the people helping get kids to safety after she drove by and saw smoke coming from the building.
“Windows are popping and like shattering,” Denil remembered. “Looking back at all the damage and knowing that between me pulling up and getting out of my car, we went from a little bit of smoke to like flames shooting out. In two minutes, the whole building was in flames, like, it's amazing everybody got out. Looking at the whole damage, it’s insane.”
Denil said after all the kids were out she stood in the parking lot, telling parents like DeCosta and Rabon that all their children were safe.
“The only thing I did was yell like, ‘They're all out. They're safe. They’re all out. They're safe!'” Denil explained. “And I just kept repeating and repeating and like the relief you could see on the parents face once it registered what I was saying, I will never forget.”
“Had it not been for everybody pitching in and helping, we might not have had some of our babies last night you say from the bottom of my heart, thank you,” DeCosta said, tearing up.
It was seeing the entire community come together to help out that Denil said solidified her decision to move to Sumter from Florida last summer.
“Everybody chipped in, everybody helped out and I think…we moved from Miami and I wanted that smaller community feel,” Denil explained. “And we definitely found that so I think for us like knowing that the community rallies together, you know, and helps out and people were offering to bring coloring books and crayons and stuff to the funeral home, you know, just keep the kids busy. It was a really good feeling knowing and being part of the community.”
Sumter Fire Division Chief Jeffrey Shirley says at this point, his team still does not know where the fire started or what caused it. He says when it comes to getting that answer it could be a matter of three weeks to four weeks.
News19 reached out to the South Carolina Department of Social Services (DSS), which tells us it is working with the daycare director and other local providers to find childcare for everyone displaced from the center.
“The plan continues to be to coordinate efforts with the provider whose facility caught fire as best we can, and we’ve engaged the South Carolina Child Care Resource and Referral Agency for assistance with the children,” a DSS spokesperson said to News 19 in an email. “We have also received information from nearby childcare facilities who want to help.”