Neighbors 4 Neighbors Stepping Up To Help Six Families Displaced By Miami Gardens Apartment Fire
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Fire crews continue to investigate a fire that ripped through an Miami Gardens apartment building Tuesday afternoon.
While officials have not confirmed the cause, neighbors said the massive blaze started on the balcony of a third floor unit.
The fire completely gutted one apartment and caused five others to be condemned.
"The third floor, you can see through it, you can see through it, like, it's bad. It's real, real bad," said Henry Mathieu, referring to the massive fire tore through Advenir at Walden Lake, a Miami Gardens apartment complex. "You see these apartment right here? You can see through them.
Officials say they had more than 20 units on the scene in an effort to contain it.
Luckily, no one was in the unit at the time, but the apartment where the fire started was a complete loss.
"When the units arrived it was a fully engulfed apartment fire on the third floor units reacted quickly to that fire, the fire had gone through the rook at that point," said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Battalion Chief Horacio Rodriguez.
Five additional units have been condemned because of water and smoke damage.
Mathieu lives in one of those units.
"The fact that I might lose everything, I'm losing all my stuff, my son clothes, my kids clothes, you know stuff that could be replaced, but it wasn't our fault that it happened, so I'm a little frustrated," he said. "They said it's so much smoke in there that we cannot sleep in there tonight."
A total of six families have been displaced and are being helped by Red Cross. They include 23 people – among them twelve children.
And now Neighbors 4 Neighbors is stepping in to help when Red Cross assistance ends.
"Neighbors 4 Neighbors steps in long-term to help with these families. To help them because many of them probably don't have rental insurance and have no means to replace the items loss and will be devastated without any financial assistance," said Neighbors 4 Neighbors Executive Director Katy Meagher.
