BATON ROUGE — Brenda Jordan and Marcia “Leah” Khan were best friends. They had taught at the same elementary school, lived next door to each other and their families vacationed together.
On Thursday, March 19th, both women died in a early morning house fire at Jordan’s house on Bywood Avenue, near the intersection of South Choctaw Drive and North Flannery Roads, in Baton Rouge.
The cause of the fire has not been determined at this time.
Jordan’s husband and adult son were home at the time of the fire. James Jordan, the son, said the sound of the burning attic is what woke his father Clinton, who woke him. They called for firefighters at 3:38 a.m.
“My mother and her friend could not physically get out of that room, and we could not physically get to that window, because one side the carport was completely ablaze, and the other side, the awning and overhang of the corner of that house, along with the wooden fence next to the neighboring house were completely ablaze,” Jordan told UWK.
He said he tried to go back inside, getting into a low, Army-crawl position to avoid smoke, but he was quickly overpowered by the fire. He added the super-heated air singed the hair on his head and arms.
“The attic door had completely burned off and flames were just shooting down the hall. It was just impassible.”
He and his father tried breaking windows in rooms closer to the women, but could not get to them. He said he had to stop his father from going back inside.
“He literally burned himself trying to crawl back in to go get them. I had to physically pull him out while he was smoldering,” Jordan said.
Clinton Jordan remains hospitalized with burns. James Jordan said his father has second-degree burns to about 6 percent of his body, including on his back and head.
“I actually had to physically pull him out of that window and tell him to stop. And about that time, that’s when we realized, you know, we’re hearing no more audible responses,” he said. “We kind of just sit back defeated and then firemen rolled in.”
It took firefighters 42 minutes to get the blaze under control. The Jordans’ two dogs also died in the fire.
Jenna Jordan said her mother and Leah Khan were best friends for more than 40 years. They did everything together, she said. She and her brother called Khan Aunt Leah, and call Khan’s children cousins.
James Jordan said that friendship led to his parents’ marriage.
“They’re actually the reason that my mother and father met, because my father was next-door neighbor to Leah and her husband, and Brenda would come over to visit Leah, and that’s how my father met her. So the reason I’m alive is because of their friendship,” he said.
Jenna Jordan said she learned about the fire because she awoke to several missed calls from numbers she didn’t recognize. She got in touch with James, who told her what had happened.
“I didn’t understand it. It wasn’t registering,” she said. “It just – it still isn’t, I don’t think. It’s just pure shock and disbelief,” she said. “They were both our moms. We lost our first and second mom, you know.”
Gofundme accounts have been set up for Jordan’s family and for Khan’s family.
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