Helen Chestnut woke up to the shouts of her neighbor, looked out the side window and saw a wall of flame.

“I looked to my side window and couldn’t see nothing but blaze of fire,” she said. “You know, that was frightening.”

Mrs. Chestnut, 80, had just gone to sleep about an hour earlier, after spending a good part of the night taking care of her Alzheimer’s stricken, 84-year-old husband, Coley.

At 3:08 a.m., the Chestnut home became one of three damaged by apparent arson on 824 Philpot Avenue. The Chestnuts live on 820 Philpot.

Another home received damage from the fire as well, on 826 Philpot.

Battalion Chief Mike Stokes said that the Chestnuts’ home and the other abandoned home were damaged because of the intense heat coming off the fire on 824.

When the fire threatened the Chestnut home, the only one of the three that was occupied, a next-door neighbor, identified by Mrs. Chestnut only as Mary Sue, woke her.

“My blessed little neighbor came over to wake us up,” Mrs. Chestnut said.

Mary Sue was described by Helen Chestnut as being in her forties.

“(She) was hollering ‘Ms. Helen, come out of there, come out of there,” Mrs. Chestnut said.

Helen Chestnut bundled her husband in a robe and rushed out of the house as soon as she saw the fire outside her window.

“My husband is ill and he was not aware of what (was) happening,” she said.

Stokes said the home on 824 Philpot was abandoned, and didn’t have electricity or gas connected when the fire broke out.

He said those facts led the department to suspect arson.

The other abandoned home on the street sustained damage as well, but Stokes said the property was “unlivable” before the fire.

As for the home that actually caught on fire, Stokes said it couldn’t be saved.

“It was a total loss,” he said.

Stokes said his department arrived on the scene at 3:10 a.m. It wasn’t until 4:48 a.m. that they fully extinguished the fire.

Luckily, both the Chestnuts and their home escaped with only minor damage. The Chestnut home sustained damage when the heat melted vinyl siding.

The Chestnuts were shook up by the incident.

“We had an experience last night,” she said.