In the Houston suburb of Sugar Land Texas, three children and their maternal grandmother died in a fire trying to keep themselves warm.

The mother of children, Jackie Pham Nguyen, who survived said they still had the power until the evening. When their power went out in the early evening the family lit the fireplace and played board games and card games.

The unusual deep freeze and regular power outages in Texas have put the families into survival mode.

She said the three kids Olivia, Edison, and Colette (aka Coco) were happy to have more time with their Ngoai (Ngoai means maternal grandmother in Vietnamese).

CNN quotes Nguyen saying, "Tucked my kids into bed, and really the next thing I know I'm in the hospital. A few hours later the fireman and a police officer came and said that no one else made it."

Nguyen said she does not remembers what happened exactly but recalls being on being on her first floor where her bedroom is and being unable to get upstairs to the children's bedrooms.

"I just remember feeling like it was so dark and I can still kind of hear everything crackling around me," she said.

A city spokesperson, Doug Adolph said the mother of three had to be restrained physically to prevent her from running back into the house.

"The family had posted on social media that they were attempting to stay warm by using a fireplace inside the home," Adolph said, adding that the cause of the fire has not yet been determined and may never be.