A Wrong Turn, a Fire on the Hill: The Stranger Who Saved a Georgia Foster Family of 14

LYERLY, Ga. - Casey Sparks had spent Saturday, Oct. 17, playing softball in Dalton, Ga., and was heading home to Concord, Ala., with his 13-year-old son when his GPS kept steering him onto Georgia Route 114, a road he had not taken on the way up. Near midnight, south of Lyerly in rural Chattooga County, he saw a glow from the top of a hill. A house was burning, and inside James and Larita Burke, their 11 adopted children and a grandchild were asleep. Mr. Sparks went in, woke the family and helped get every one of them out, the Lyerly fire chief and the family said.

"I redid my GPS like two or three times, and it kept telling me to go that way," Mr. Sparks, 37, told NBC News. "So it's like, 'All right, I guess we're going this way.'" The Burkes, who first spoke to Local 3 News in Chattanooga, know him simply as Mr. Casey.

Mr. Burke, 58, had fallen asleep in his recliner. "The next thing I know, some guy was telling me in my living room, 'Hey, you've got to get out of here. Your house is on fire,'" he told the station. "He was on the wrong road. His GPS put him on the wrong path," he said. "He's never been down that path before, and he said he knew that something was bringing him down that road when he saw the fire from the top of the hill; he knew he had to take action. I'm so thankful that he did."

Firefighters were called at 11:58 p.m., Lyerly Fire Chief Tim Deberry told NBC News. Mr. Sparks said he arrived to find a teenage boy fighting the flames with a garden hose and the whole front of the house ablaze, and told his son to call 911 before he ran inside. "He had actually come in, opened the door, started yelling, 'Get out, the house is on fire!' and started getting them out of the house," the chief said. "If they would have been in there for probably no more than five more minutes, there would have been fatalities."

Mr. Sparks said he found a little girl in a hospital bed, scooped her up and, when the door he had come through was engulfed, found another way out and handed her over a fence to a neighbor before going back in for the others. Mr. Burke said the stranger helped pull all 12 children from the house and helped get firefighters to the scene. No one was hurt. "If it had been another five minutes, it would've been a different situation," Mrs. Burke told Local 3 News. "We wouldn't have made it."

Mr. Sparks, a welding equipment repairman, said he was never afraid. "We're from the South, man, and we help each other. We help our neighbors," he told NBC News. "I mean, I would hope somebody would do the same for me."

The house, the family's home of 17 years, was a total loss, Local 3 News reported. WSB-TV in Atlanta reported that the family also lost its vehicles, and that, according to the family, the fire came two weeks after Mr. Burke finished chemotherapy and radiation for tonsil cancer. The Chattooga County Sheriff's Office said the cause remains under investigation.

The Burkes have been foster parents for 15 years and have welcomed more than 500 children into their home in that time, they told Local 3 News. The children living with them now are adopted, according to Local 3 News and WSB-TV, which described them as former foster children.

When the shock wore off on Sunday morning, the kindness of one stranger gave way to the kindness of many. "It's overwhelming how much, immediately, people called to ask, 'Hey, what do you need? What can we do?'" the Burkes said. "There are so many wonderful people in this community that have reached out. I didn't realize this county was as wonderful as it was until something like this happened." Friends and family have started a GoFundMe campaign to help the family find temporary housing and replace essentials, WSB-TV reported.

The youngest children are still making sense of it. "My little three-year-old keeps asking, 'Daddy, when do we go home?'" Mr. Burke said. "I said soon." The couple tell them the burned house is still theirs. "It just needs to be fixed," they said.

For now the family is looking for a rental home large enough for all 14 of them while they rebuild, and Mr. Burke said he hopes to keep fostering once the house is finished. Mrs. Burke put the week in the plainest terms. "We are traumatized, of course, but you know what? We're going to turn this page, and we're gonna continue our lives because we have so much to live for," she said. "All of our babies made it out, and that is so amazing."

Sources: NBC News, David K. Li, Oct. 27, 2026: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/motorist-led-astray-gps-georgia-stumbles-house-fire-saves-sleeping-fam-rcna605943 ; Local 3 News (WRCB), Grace Kraemer, Oct. 21, 2026: https://www.local3news.com/local-news/chattooga-county-family-of-14-credit-stranger-for-saving-their-lives-after-massive-fire/article_c6508898-6a86-4032-8bf3-fd8bed442c69.html ; WRCB via CNN Newsource on WTAP, Oct. 22, 2026: https://www.wtap.com/2026/10/22/wrong-turn-leads-stranger-rescue-family-14-house-fire/ ; WSB-TV, Alex Jones, Oct. 21, 2026: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/family-12-foster-kids-saved-house-fire-weeks-after-dad-finishes-cancer-treatment/6YIXH7ZX7VGYVJH36MZ42R5FSY/ ; Good News Network, Oct. 27, 2026. The rescuer, whom the family calls Mr. Casey, was identified by name, age and hometown by NBC News, to which he spoke on the record. Quotations are as published by Local 3 News; a syndicated version attributes some lines differently between Mr. and Mrs. Burke. The children, including Mr. Sparks's son, are not named, and the family's address is omitted. All images are illustrative, freely licensed photos from Wikimedia Commons.