Glendalis Gonzalez came home to find her apartment surrounded by fire trucks. Then a firefighter placed her crying son and nephew in her arms.
The two children had been in the apartment when it caught fire on Tuesday afternoon. The blaze drew five fire trucks and over 20 firefighters to 95 Kensington St.
No one was injured in the fire, which was limited to a rear bedroom. The 10 people who live there were forced out of their homes.
Gonzalez (pictured) wasn’t at home when the fire started. Her two toddlers were inside with her nephew and her sister-in-law. They all made it out safely, along with the other occupants of the multi-family house.
The fire was phoned in just before 2 p.m., said acting Battalion Chief Miguel Rosado after he emerged from the building on Tuesday. Firefighters put out the fire in just a few minutes, Rosado said.
The cause of the fire was unknown, he said.
By 2:30 p.m., Gonzalez had arrived on the sidewalk. She looked on numbly as she held her 4‑year-old son in her arms. Behind her, firefighters wrapped up their hoses and put their gear away.
While the fire was contained to a bedroom, she worried that smoke and water damage may have ruined all her property.
“I lost everything,” she said. She looked past the yellow caution tape to her house and began to cry. “My kids’ clothes. Everything. Now I’ve got nothing.”
Gonzalez said she has lived at the house with her four kids for three years, during which time she has been unemployed. The building is subsidized housing operated by Kensington Square Management Apartment Homes.
Gonzalez’s two older children were in school at the time of the fire. She said her sister-in-law had been in the apartment, taking care of her son and Gonzalez’s two toddlers, Miguel and Alvin. “Like Alvin and the Chipmunks,” Gonzalez said.
The sister-in-law, who has asthma, was being treated by paramedics after the fire. She had told Gonzalez what happened when the blaze began.
An electrical breaker flipped, Gonzalez said. “The lights went off and the fire started.” It must have been an electrical fire, she reckoned.
“There was a heater plugged up in the bed room,” said Sherrie Garner (at left in photo), property manager for the building. Perhaps the space heater had caused the fire, she said.
Gonzalez confirmed that there was a space heater in the apartment, but she said it hadn’t been plugged in. “It gets real cold” in the apartment, she said, explaining why she had a heater.
Between her tears, Gonzalez complained bitterly about the accusing way her upstairs neighbors — nearby on the sidewalk — were looking at her. “I lost all my stuff too!” she said to Garner.
“People just react out of emotion,” Garner replied. “It’s OK.”
The building was insured by Kensington Square Management, but Gonzalez’s belongings weren’t, Garner said. She said the company would find housing for all of the residents displaced by the fire.
Gonzalez’s upstairs neighbor, Maritza Rivera, had been crying also. As she wiped away tears, she was comforted by her cousin, Jose DeJesus. DeJesus said he works for Kensington doing maintenance. He had seen the smoke from the fire and run in to see what he could save. All the people were out, but DeJesus grabbed his cousin’s dog, parrots, and snake. There were 10 people living in the house altogether, DeJesus said.
Later, Lt. Louis Rivera knelt to explain in Spanish to Gonzalez that she would be allowed to enter her home to collect a few belongings before the Red Cross put her up for the night. He told her the fire damage had been limited to the rear bedroom, that there was smoke damage in the rest of the apartment, and that there was also water damage in the kitchen area.
Theda Edwards, a neighbor, showed up with several bags of clothes. She and several others helped the children into overalls and socks and sweaters.