Help After a Fire

Hi, our names are Jorge, Cris, and Sam and last Friday, May 6th, 2022, our home was the scene of a fire set off by one of our neighbor’s friends, that forced us to leave our home.

Around 8:30am that morning, we were woken up by a neighbor letting us know that there was a fire on the wall that is shared with our other neighbor’s building. We promptly got to action and while one of us looked for our cats, the other took our garden hose from the front yard and started spraying the wall where the smoke was coming from to no avail. Not long after, the San Francisco Fire Department showed up and evacuated us from our home. After a couple of hours, the SFFD was able to extinguish the fire and thankfully we were able to be reunited with each other and our kitties, Tino and Kitty. We were all fine, but the same could not be said for our home.

After the fire was extinguished we found out that one of the friends from our neighbors had dropped something in the crevice that separates our two houses by a couple of inches. Whatever was dropped started a fire that traveled from the side of our house to our attic. In order to put out the fire, the firefighters had to create holes from the interior of our house as well as from the roof. Their house suffered minimum damage and they are able to stay there. We were not so lucky.

The fire coupled with the efforts by the firefighters to extinguish it, left a big part of our house irreparably damaged and unsafe to live. We lost some of our personal belongings and a lot of them also suffered water damage as well. Most of our things were covered in debris and the smell of fire and smoke permeated some of our furniture.

We know that people have had hard times due to the pandemic, but we are asking for a little bit of help to put us back on our feet. We are all employed full time, but unfortunately we are part of the large percentage of people that live pay check to pay check in a very expensive city (San Francisco). In the aftermath of this incident, the little amount of savings that we had has been depleted by paying for moving costs, cleaning expenses and trying to salvage as much as we could. We fortunately have a temporary place to stay but we do have to move out and find other accommodations that will require more money for moving expenses in the short term. We are faced to having not to only make up for the money that we lost when we could not go to work in order to deal with the aftermath, but also to have enough for day to day life as well as for continuing to deal with the fallout. We have spent a lot more money than we have in moving supplies, fees for moving utilities, special cleaning crew for the furniture we were able to save, among other things.

We never thought we would be in this position and it is something that we would never wish on anybody. In a matter of hours our home and part of our belongings were gone. Our sense of security was consumed in flames and we had to scramble in order to be alright. We really are trying and working hard in order to get on our feet, but we do need some help. The money you donate will be split among the three of us to put our lives back together. We will be eternally grateful for any help we can get and know that we are the type of people that pays it forward when we can and even when we can’t.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Jorge, Cris & Sam.