She was just home for the holidays. Then she watched her Beaufort County home burn.

Desiree Watson was buying clothes to replace the burned ones when she saw a familiar face.

It was her former high school counselor. Watson, home from college on Christmas break, should have been gushing about her first semester as a business student at USC Salkehatchie.

Instead, she had sad news to report.

The Sheldon home where Watson grew up burned to the ground as she watched Saturday morning. Watson woke up to her dad, Anthony Watson, shouting at about 7 a.m. for her to get out of the house.

A heater had sparked the flames she saw in the living room. Anthony tried engage the fire extinguisher, but the pin stuck.

He ran outside for the hose, but the fire was already too large. A two-minute video Desiree captured shows firefighters battling the fire as flames and smoke shoot from the roof.

“Everything was destroyed,” the 19-year-old said. “Everything was gone.”

By the time Sheldon firefighters extinguished the blaze, the green double-wide trailer where Desiree and her three siblings grew up was gone. Family photo albums, plastic VHS tapes storing videos of the Watsons as babies and high school diplomas are also part of the ashes.

Desiree’s laptop and other school supplies — including the key to her dorm — also burned.

As she leaned in what had been her bedroom window and picked through what was left of her room, Desiree found her college math notebook and the remains of the computer. She had to call a professor Monday and let her know the fate of a take-home exam.

The home wasn’t insured, Desiree said. The family has started an online fundraising campaign to replace some of the essentials lost.

Desiree and her sisters, Diquietta and Tykia, met Monday afternoon at the burned home where they all grew up. They pulled on new pairs of black gloves, stood on the back porch and tossed burned boards and mattress springs into a pile.

Packages of ramen noodles and canned goods mixed with appliances. Desiree picked up a blackened metal bowl.

“This the sink?” she asked. It went on the pile.

Anthony is a truck driver and often spends his weekends working on cars. Whenever Desiree has a problem with her car, it’s her dad who fixes it.

A blue truck cab was parked in front of the house and another old truck cab was part of numerous cars lined up around the edge of the property.

A taillight of a Lexus sedan was melted. The heat melted the cover on a red Pontiac GTO under a nearby carport, revealing the silver emblem on the side. The sports car was spared.

Desiree found her keys but will have to replace them.

Two spindly trees just in front of the front porch were spared. Tykia, now 28, planted them on Earth Day in elementary school. Anthony told her later that he had her plant them close to the house because he thought that’s where they would die most quickly.

The Watsons grew up riding ATVs on the property, spreading deer corn, playing in a park just down the street or with the family’s two pitbulls.

People have offered to donate clothes and food, Desiree said.

She is staying with her sister in Port Royal. Her father and stepmother are staying with her grandmother, who lives not far from the Watsons.

Firefighters offered to connect the family with the American Red Cross, but they had not heard back as of Monday morning. A Red Cross news release sent on Wednesday explained the organization is assisting the family financially and with comfort kits, which include personal hygiene items.

Desiree saw her former Whale Branch Early College High School guidance counselor, Karen Vaughn, at Walmart on Saturday. She told Vaughn what happened, and the counselor said she would talk to her principal and see how the school might help.

Desiree had graduated from Whale Branch earlier this year. She feared nothing was left of her recent graduation pictures.

But she found the photos in the charred pile that had been her room, albeit blackened and badly damaged.

And there was more.

The women pulled the doors open on an old chest in the living room that had displayed medals, trophies and family photos. They peeled out photos that had been protected by a charred coffee mug.

One was of Tykia’s senior prom at Battery Creek High School. Tykia then pulled a large photo album from the cabinet.

Pieces of the burned covers flaked off.

“Oh my gosh, y’all,” she said.

Some of the photos they thought were lost forever had survived.

There were photos of the family from Tykia’s graduation from U.S. Air Force basic training. Other photos showed the send-off when Tykia deployed to Iraq.

“I was fat!” Desiree said of the photo from a decade earlier.

“You were a little kid,” Tykia countered.

“It’s making my eyes watery,” said Diquietta, 26.

“Don’t cry,” Tykia said. “You thought they were gone, and we have it. You’re going to make me cry.”

The women hugged near what used to be the living room.

This story was originally published December 18, 2017 at 5:08 PM with the headline "She was just home for the holidays. Then she watched her Beaufort County home burn.."