Carleen White, 59, and her son, Bryan White, 26, escaped without injury after they smelled smoke coming from their enclosed breezeway at 7 p.m. Monday.
The aftermath of the fire Tuesday left Carleen White wondering whether an unusual Christmas gift for her son remains intact.
"I handmade him something that was pretty special," White said.
Firefighters from Collinsville and nearby Caseyville put out the fire in about three hours at White's two-bedroom home at 308 S. Bluff Road.
Water from two pumper trucks froze Monday night on the steep private drive that leads to White's house. City street workers had to salt the drive so the Whites and fire trucks could leave.
White and her son checked into the nearby Drury Inn after the fire.
When the fire began, the Whites were watching television in the living room of the brick house that is nestled in trees above the road.
"We were sitting there watching 'The Swan' and I smelled smoke," White said. "The smoke had hardly even gotten to the rest of the house."
By the time her son had dialed 911, smoke was sweeping through the attic from the breezeway and making it difficult for them to get out of their house, she said.
The front door, torn from its hinges by firefighters, lay in the yard Tuesday with a Christmas wreath still attached.
"I had just put up my tree the night before, and my gifts were wrapped," said White, a teller at First Collinsville Bank, who worked for 25 years in the jewelry department of now-closed Grandpa Pigeon's discount store.
Bryan White is a forklift operator.
The exact cause of the fire had not been determined Tuesday, Collinsville Fire Chief Jim Twyman said. A complete report is expected today. White said the fire appeared to come from the ceiling of the breezeway.
Carleen and Bryan White are waiting in motel to find out from her insurance company whether the house she has owned for 27 years can be repaired.
White said she had not yet been in the house to see whether her Christmas gifts and other items are salvageable. She said she hopes the house can be repaired instead of torn down.
"It's too soon to know what to do. I'm just waiting on the insurance company to tell me what's available to me," White said.
An insurance investigator already has told White that smoke damage will make all the clothes in the house unusable, she said.
