By Natalie P. Mcneal and Diana Moskovitz
The Miami Herald
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — The grieving son of the 81-year-old man killed in a Coral Springs fire over the weekend said Sunday that he wonders what caused the fatal blaze.
“I love my father, and I miss him,” said Herbert Ashe Jr., 50, who had moved from Chicago to live with and help care for him. “It’s an unfortunate thing that happened. I hope all the people that met him and got to know him saw the better parts of him.”
Meanwhile, investigators also spent Sunday trying to determine what caused the fire at the Coral Springs retirement home on Saturday that killed Herbert Ashe Sr. and forced the evacuation of about 150 elderly people.
They have no answers yet, they say.
When Herbert Ashe Jr. last saw his father on Friday, the older man was sleeping. The Ashes lived together in a fourth-floor apartment at St. Andrew’s Towers, 2700 NW 99th Ave., next to St. Andrew’s Catholic Church.
Herbert Ashe Jr. went to have dinner with friends in the Towers’ second building. When he came back, he saw the commotion of the evacuation.
The fire was contained in the Ashe apartment, where it appears to have started, but smoke flooded the building, forcing a massive evacuation of about 150 seniors from the seven-story building.
Ashe Sr. died of smoke inhalation, according to the Broward County Medical Examiner’s office.
“The first thing I thought about was my apartment. I thought about my father,” Herbert Ashe Jr. said.
When he heard that his father had probably died, Ashe Jr. said, “I just couldn’t believe it. I was flabbergasted. I was gone, totally lost.”
His father grew up in South Carolina, eventually moving to Chicago, then Delray Beach for the warm weather. He had many jobs: cook, maitre d’, post office employee. He also had three children, with Ashe Jr. the oldest.
Alzheimer’s afflicted his father at age 70, Herbert Ashe Jr. said. About four years ago, worried about how his father was doing, he came to Florida and moved in with his father.
Now he is left to wonder what could have started the fire.
Ashe Sr. smoked -- but the Alzheimer’s made it hard for him to even light a cigarette on his own, his son said.
And Ashe Jr. couldn’t think of anything he had left on before leaving the apartment.
“I’m still thinking about what it might be,” he said.
On Sunday, there was little evidence on the building’s front exterior that a fatal fire had occurred within; water damage, however, was still visible on hallway floors.
Lt. Joseph Schwartz, of the state fire marshal’s office, said that items were taken from where the fire appears to have started for testing. But it could be weeks before evidence from the fire scene is processed, he said.
“We will pull clothing and burned debris from where the fire originated. We make sure nothing is there that shouldn’t be there,” Schwartz said.
“It’s something that we do on every fire.”
Coral Springs police are interviewing witnesses, trying to determine what happened leading up to the fire, Schwartz said.
While the fire was contained to the Ashes’ apartment, other units on the same floor had structural damage from when firefighters were evacuating residents, said Mary Ross Agosta, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami, which owns and operates the complex.
Since then, contractors had boarded up the windows of Ashe’s apartment and were cleaning up the rest of the fourth floor, Agosta said.
Those whose apartments were still uninhabitable were staying at a La Quinta Inn in Coral Springs, courtesy of American Red Cross of Broward County. They included Herbert Ashe Jr.
Friends from the retirement home and nearby -- like Shirley Grimes, 83, who lives in a neighboring building -- recalled the Ashes: How the elder Ashe often sat outside on a park bench. How his son would push his father’s wheelchair around the complex; how he would help his father into and out of bed.
Herbert Ashe Jr. would help around the complex, making coffee daily for residents and doing odd jobs for pay, they said.
“They were a wonderful family,” said Grimes.
Copyright 2008 The Miami Herald