Fireworks suspected in large Shelby Township house blaze

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Looking at her father with a bandage around his arm, covered in soot in the middle of what used to be a beautiful home, Ewelina Saputo feels helpless.

Most of her parents' home on Mallard Tuesday has now been reduced to rubble.

"My dad woke up to a crash out the back, I think the window came through," Saputo said. "Got my mom out, they managed to get our cars out, but that's about it."

"The blessing is that my parents are alive and I guess the rest is just materialistic stuff. Memories are in our head."

Saputo says her father first noticed the flames on the back deck which is wooden. But the fire chief says the fire may have started where the hot tub was, with a wooden gazebo over it.

"The only thing we know for sure is people on the neighboring block, upwind of us, were shooting fireworks off late last night," said Shelby Township Fire Chief Jim Swinkowski. "

While Swinkowski says they're looking into a possible electrical fire near the hot tub, he says neighbors heard fireworks going off nearby around midnight to 1a.m. and those could be responsible.

"It's possible that if it was sitting there for a little while smoldering, until the fire got big enough and spread rapidly," Swinkowski.

"We don't know for a fact yet," Saputo said. "But their life is in shambles."

As the cause is investigated, this family is now digging through the rubble and trying to salvage what's left. They hoping this isn't because of someone else's negligence.

"We've had it in year's past where fireworks have burned down houses and garages," the chief said. "Leave it to the professionals. Allot of Metro Parks, cities and townships, they have professionals and fireworks that are done correctly. That is where it belongs, not in densely populated areas, where you know when you set something off it is coming down on someone's property, someone's house and this is what happens."