Latasha Perkins had a task this week no parent should ever have to undertake: making funeral arrangements for her four young children.

The youngsters were killed in mobile home fire just after midnight on Jan. 17 in Lacombe. Since then she has been staying with her sister in Slidell, where, according to her nephew, Kelvin Lindsay, she is managing to cope with the tragedy.

“She’s doing better than she was, but it’s just really hard for everybody,” said Lindsay. The children attended Chahta-Ima Elementary School in Lacombe, which has brought in a team of counselors to help both students and parents.

“Anytime something like this happens, we have a special team that goes to the school to speak with the children or their parents, anyone who might be having trouble dealing with it,” said St. Tammany Parish School Board spokesperson Meredith Mendez.

According to St. Tammany Fire District 4, Perkins had left the children in care of their grandparents to run a quick errand with a friend. When she returned, smoke was pouring from the windows, and her friend kicked in the front door, only to find the smoke and heat too intense to enter.

The children were in a bedroom at the front of the trailer, where the fire is believed to have started. Their grandmother, Maxine Perkins, and step-grandfather, Eddie Taylor, reportedly escaped through a window in their bedroom at the rear of the trailer. Taylor was taken to Louisiana Heart Hospital in Lacombe, where he remains hospitalized, though he is no longer on a ventilator.

The fire is still under investigation, although authorities believe an oil-filled space heater in the children’s bedroom may have been the source.

“There’s a number of different things that can happen,” said Donald Carter, a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Fire Marshal’s Office. “Sometimes the unit has malfunctioned, but usually what we see are combustibles placed too close to the heating element.”

Services for the four children were Saturday.

An account has been set up at Capital One Bank to help the Perkins family cope with expenses and replace some of their belongings. Anyone wishing to help may go to any Capital One branch to make a donation.