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Debbie Mayhieu, right, gets a hug from neighbor Jodi Bennett Tuesday. A family looks through ashes They're thankful to be uninjured; neighbors help with shelter, clothes By JIM DAVIS PROSPECT -- The blackened shell of a computer. A burned and melted box of records. Two wooden elephants -- a gift from years before -- charred beyond recognition. Peter Mayhieu walked through the ashes of his burned home Tuesday morning, poking at the remnants of his and his family's life. Photos by Jim Craven Peter Mayhieu looks through the rubble that remained of his Prospect home Tuesday after a grease fire in the kitchen spread to destroy the house. Mayhieu, his wife and their 11-year-old daughter escaped without injury. He looked for his wife's and his mother's antique wedding rings. "I know where they're supposed to be," he said, "but I just can't find them." Even so, Peter Mayhieu and his wife, Debbie, had something to be thankful for Tuesday: They had made it out of their home, and no one was injured seriously. "I'm just grateful that we had the sense to get out," Debbie Mayhieu said. The fire began at 1700 Mill Creek Drive on Monday evening when Peter and Debbie and their daughter Crystal were gathered at a table in their living room, eating steaks and fries and watching television. Crystal, 11, heard a crackling sound coming from the kitchen. "I said, `Poppa, something's popping,"' Crystal said. Peter Mayhieu went into the kitchen and found that a pan full of grease had caught fire and the flames had spread all over the stovetop. He picked up a lid and tried to cover the grease, but that just caused smoke and flames to erupt into his face. His wife doused a blanket in water in the bathtub and took it into the kitchen. They threw the blanket onto the flames, which were crawling up the kitchen wall. The fire just burned through the blanket. "I told her to get out of here, to take my daughter and the animals and get out," Peter Mayhieu said. "The kid was screaming." Debbie Mayhieu herded the dog, the three cats and Crystal out of the home. Peter Mayhieu went to the bedroom to grab some clothes, but thick, black smoke filled the room. He ran out a back door. Prospect and Shady Cove firefighters arrived within five minutes, but couldn't do anything to stop the fire. "We had flames that were through the roof 15 to 20 feet high," said Prospect assistant fire chief Bob Batte. Hampered by mud, snow and later freezing rain, firefighters could only keep the fire away from a garage, some antique cars and nearby trees. "People don't know how fast it can go," Debbie Mayhieu said. As the fire burned, Debbie Mayhieu remembered that she left the bathtub running when she got the wet blanket. "I told my wife, `Don't worry about it,"' Peter Mayhieu said. The family had lived in the home for two years. Peter Mayhieu, a former bartender who lives on disability because of problems with his back and arm, had been fixing the place up with a friend. He had just finished the outside of the home. He said he was meeting with the insurance agent on Tuesday. He had tried to get insurance coverage bumped up last year, but was denied. Now, he said he needs to figure out how the insurance -- about $74,000 -- will pay for removing the charred remains, building a new home and buying the family clothing and furniture. "We'll sit down and start figuring out the prices," he said. People from around the Prospect area stopped by Tuesday morning, some in pairs and some alone. They offered the family clothing and a place to stay at a mobile home park and gave him phone numbers to call for help when the family got more settled. "There's a lot of people offering a lot of help," Peter Mayhieu said. "It's one of the nice parts of living in a small town." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA