Woman loses house, but not keepsake

Staring at her gutted Algonquin home Friday, Patricia Livesay-Smith was certain the last memories of her son, Matthew Collura, were lost in the flames.

That was until a firefighter handed Livesay-Smith a charred photo album recovered from the smoking remnants of her two-story home on Helen Drive.

"This is all I wanted out of there," said Livesay-Smith, smiling through tears as she opened the album displaying slightly damaged photos of Matthew, who died six years ago in a motorcycle crash. He was 23. "This, and a teddy bear his fiancee made me out of his clothes."

But the teddy bear was likely among the countless belongings destroyed in Friday's fire that broke out just after 11 a.m. The preliminary cause of the fire was listed as "ignition of improperly disposed smoking materials."

Investigators deemed the house uninhabitable. Livesay-Smith and her husband, Todd Smith, had lived in the home for about a year, Livesay-Smith said.

The house is across the street from a home gutted by fire six months ago.

Smith said he was home alone working on a computer in an upstairs office when he heard two pops.

"By the time I got downstairs, the entire back of the house was on fire," said Smith, who operated an audio and video equipment repair business from the home.

"It started outside on the porch, but there is nothing there that I can figure that could have started it," Smith said.

Algonquin-Lake in the Hills Fire Protection District Chief Steve Guetschow said emergency crews arrived at 11:11 a.m. and saw flames coming from the back of the house.

"As we were preparing for that fire, fire broke out on the first and second floors," Guetschow said. "The whole back of the house is demolished. It's gone."

Guetschow said today's fire does not appear related to an April 28 fire that destroyed the home across the street and killed four pets.

In the earlier fire, the family of six, including three children, were not home at the time. The April fire originated in a laundry room on the first floor before spreading upstairs to the bedrooms.

Firefighters responded from Algonquin-Lake in the Hills, Crystal Lake, Marengo, Cary, Woodstock, Huntley, West Dundee, Elgin and Pingree Grove fire departments.