By Staci DaSilva
sdasilva@kcautv.com
For the Schlotman family, Christmas morning started with a pounding at the door.
Amy Campbell-Schlotman, homeowner, said, "At 6'oclock, someone had been pounding on our door and we didn't hear him. So then he opened the door and was running through the house yelling Shane's name because he knew Shane."
Amy and Shane Schlotman say without that Good Samaritan, the family may have never got out in time.
Because when the couple quickly got their 4-month old son Blake and Amy's 2 children out of the house, they turned around and saw their new home, purchased just last summer in Jefferson, South Dakota, up in flames.
"It just happens so quick. You don't know the severity of it 'until it's done," said Shane Schlotman.
"I really believed it was something small. And that they would get it out and we'd just have to repair the roof. So we didn't go back in to get anything," said Amy Campbell-Schlotman.
But the roof caved in. Other damages are so severe, the home has to be demolished.
For now, the family of 7 has moved into 2 rooms at the Days Inn in North Sioux City.
When they got out of the fire on Christmas morning, they had not much more than the clothes on their backs.
There were items destroyed in their home, that can't be replaced, and those are the hardest to lose.
Amy Campbell-Schlotman said, "We had a lot of photo albums, including our wedding photos. We just got married a year and a half ago. And then my kid's school pictures, there's like 10-12 years of school pictures and I don't have them anywhere else."
The family hopes to move into an apartment in Jefferson in the next few weeks.
If you'd like to help the family, there's a fund set up in their name at Home Federal Bank.
The cause of the fire was electrical.
