A Driver’s Wrong GPS Turn Led Him to a Burning Georgia Home, Where He Woke a Family of 14 Who Have Fostered More Than 500 Children

“If it had been another five minutes, it would’ve been a different situation,” Larita Burke said of the night a stranger walked into her family’s burning home in Lyerly, Georgia. The family would not have made it, she added, according to a report by WRCB, distributed through CNN Newsource.

The stranger was a man identified only as Casey, who was driving home to Alabama with his son when the directions on his GPS sent him down a road he had never driven. At the top of a hill on Highway 114, south of Lyerly, he saw the flames.

A recliner, a Saturday night and a man in the living room

The fire started on a Saturday night while the household slept. The family of 14 is James and Larita Burke, their 11 children and one grandchild. James had fallen asleep in his recliner.

He woke to find Casey standing in his living room. As James recalled the moment, the message was blunt: Casey told him to get out because the house was on fire, according to the version published by WCAX.

Casey then helped pull the children out of the house and helped get firefighters to the scene. The reports refer to 12 children being brought out, and the Burkes’ household includes 11 children and one grandchild. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Every child made it out

Everyone in the home survived. James Burke said every one of the children got out. The house and the family’s belongings did not.

James also relayed what Casey told him about the drive. By James’s account, the driver said something kept bringing him down that road. According to the WTOC pickup of the story, the family’s youngest child, age 3, keeps asking when everyone can go home.

The morning after the fire, Sunny Skyz reported, people were calling and messaging to ask what the family needed. WRCB reported that neighbors and strangers in the community offered help. None of the reports mentioned a specific fundraiser.

A family that has fostered more than 500 children

The Burkes are not new to opening their home to children. They have fostered more than 500 children over the past 15 years, according to the WRCB report, and they hope to foster again once their home is rebuilt. The reports do not give a timeline for the rebuild.

Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services says the state has just under 10,000 children and youth in foster care and especially needs caregivers for teenagers, sibling groups and children with complex needs. Its foster parent page says applicants must be at least 21, complete a medical exam, pass child protective screenings and criminal record checks, and attend a virtual information session before approval. Pre-service training is a trauma-informed course taught over five or ten weeks.

The same page lists a caregiver navigator at 877-210-KIDS (5437) for people who want to start. It says the agency seeks relatives to take in a child first, then foster caregivers. Applicants can choose to work through DFCS or one of more than 100 private child placing agencies, and approved caregivers must keep up with continuing training after they are licensed.

Why a night fire leaves so little time

Larita Burke’s “five minutes” matches how fast a house fire can turn deadly. The American Red Cross says people may have less than two minutes to escape from a burning home. In its Fire Prevention Week safety tips, the organization advises knowing two ways out of every room, practicing the plan twice a year and picking an outdoor meeting spot a safe distance from the house.

The Red Cross also recommends smoke alarms on every level, including inside and outside bedrooms, and says they can cut the risk of dying in a fire nearly in half. Alarms should be tested monthly, and any that are 10 years old or older should be replaced because their sensors lose sensitivity over time. It adds that once outside, no one should go back in for anyone, any pet or any belongings, and that children should be taught what the alarm sounds like and how to respond.

Citing the National Fire Protection Association, the Red Cross said a home fire occurred every 23 seconds in the United States in 2024. The organization says it responds to more than 60,000 disasters a year, most of them home fires.

The Red Cross also says to time fire drills to see how long everyone takes to get out, and to call 911 once outside. Those steps matter most in a house like the Burkes’, where 12 children, including a 3-year-old, have to be found and woken in the dark.

Other families have faced emergencies where the person who knew what to do was not an adult. Parent Diaries has covered an 11-year-old in West Jordan, Utah, who called 911 when her mom collapsed, and a 5-year-old who ran down a gravel road for help when his grandmother collapsed.

For a household of 14, getting everyone out in that window takes more than one pair of hands. In this case, the extra pair belonged to a man who was not supposed to be on that road at all.

The Burkes’ story has run on local television stations across the country through the WRCB report. What the family has said is that their home is gone, their children are safe, and fostering is still the plan.

Get stories like this by email. Sign up for The Parent Diaries Letter.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Tony Webster – CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons