Fire claims Williamson home

Local restauranteurs Karen U. and Kai Zheng were the victims of a house fire late this morning, with a Griffin firefighter holding down the fort with a hose pipe until local fire trucks could arrive.Griffin firefighter Mark Saporita and his father were riding down the road and spotted the smoke.”My dad said thought it was just someone burning off grass but I’m a fireman and I knew that black smoke was a house,” said Saporita. “We chased it down and called it in.”When local firefighters arrived shortly afterward Saporita, dressed in khaki shorts and a white shirt, was using the garden hose to do what he could. He traded off the small hose for a larger one and helped operate Pike’s ladder truck when it arrived.The fire call went out about 11:30 a.m. for 136 Brown Station Dr. in the Brown Station subdivision in Williamson. Neighbors said they called it in after they observed smoke coming from the garage. A bedroom is above the garage, said Karen Zheng.The Zhengs own the China House Restaurant in Zebulon. She told the Pike County Journal Reporter all was fine and there was no smoke smell when she left the house around 10:30 a.m.