Pregnant mother of 5 seeks help after fire guts Little Havana apartment
MIAMI - A pregnant mother of five children is seeking help after surviving a fire that gutted their Little Havana apartment last week and she is also showing us where she believes that blaze started.
With tears rolling down her cheeks, Anallive Calle described the ordeal that she and her children went through inside their 2nd-floor apartment just before 10 pm last Tuesday at 44 N.W. 21st Ave.
"I am nervous and scared and overwhelmed," she told CBS News Miami's Peter D'Oench. "I just don't want to be out there on the streets with my kids and they are saying Mom I am hungry. I have a son with autism and this is really hard on him.
Calle says they were sleeping when the fire broke. Miami Fire Rescue said it appears the blaze happened by accident in her kitchen and Calle believes it started in the stove from an electrical short.
"When I have been cooking sometimes, it was sparking and short-circuiting and little flames have come out."
Calle said she had to think quickly in order to rescue her children. She has two twins, a boy and a girl who are a year old and a 3-year-old girl named Annalea and a 4-year-old boy with autism and another daughter who is 7.
She said, "My worry is they won't have a roof over their heads and they will be hungry."
"All I remember from the fire is I opened my eyes and it was so dark and it was hard to breathe and I was gasping and I was thinking if I am gasping, what about the children? They must really be gasping. I tried the lights and there were no lights. It was dark and I panicked even more. There were a lot of flames and when I opened the door smoke came and there were more flames and I really panicked," said Calle.
She said, "I remember choking over and over again and there was a nagging thickness in my throat and I was thinking of the babies. Go get the babies. I can hear my daughter saying. Now my kids keep thinking about this and this is so hard on them."
She was able to get all of her children safely out of the apartment.
Calle said the Red Cross provided some help for 3 days but now she is on her own.
D'Oench asked Calle what it would mean to her to find a place to live and she burst out crying, saying "It would mean the world. It would mean the world to us just to have a place where my babies can be at."
CBS News Miami referred Calle to the Homeless Helpline at 1-877-994-4357. She said she might be receiving some assistance from them and her name was put on a list.
She has also been in touch with Miami-Dade Public Housing and Community Development at (786) 469-4100.
Calle will also be calling 211 to see if she can find any other agencies that can help her and others in similar situations.
