PHOTOS: Jane Robinson had only a minute to collect her husband and two cats early Saturday morning before firefighters told her to evacuate.
It was around 2:30 a.m. and the house next door on 374 S. Shore Drive was engulfed in flames.
As she ran out of her front door, Robinson could see the center of her neighbor’s 10,883-square-foot home ablaze.
“The flames were so high that the farther we ran, the more ash followed us,” Robinson told the Herald-Tribune on Sunday.
The four-alarm fire that burned for about 12 hours on Saturday appeared to have destroyed most of the second floor of the former bayfront mansion of divorced real estate power couple Charles and Kim Githler, according to Sarasota County Fire Chief Michael Regnier.
“The damage was pretty extensive, with a large volume of the fire in the attic space,” Regnier said. “The fire consumed a good majority of the roof, but most of the damage was at the center section of the house.”
There were no injuries. The State Fire Marshal is still investigating the cause of the fire.