When a fire struck in January 2003, Rosalie Sanchez survived her nightmare. Now she must do it all again.
By JARED GOLDBERG-LEOPOLD
Published February 25, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Rosalie Sanchez and her children have survived two house fires in one year.
A year ago, an electrical fire nearly killed Sanchez and her three children. Ever since, they have lived in fear of flames.
Sanchez hasn't been able to sleep at night, sitting in her rocking chair until dawn to protect her children from a possible fire.
"I'd just sit in the chair and I'd just rock all night long," said Sanchez, who is 31. "When I know it's almost daylight, then I know it's safe for me to go to sleep."
Now her rocking chair is a pile of ashes in her burnt-out bedroom after another fire of undetermined cause ravaged her new apartment on the afternoon of Feb. 12. Now, Sanchez doesn't know when to feel safe.
"Before it was at night, now it's the day," Sanchez said. "Now which time do I pick to sleep?"
Sanchez and her family were not at their new home, at 4146 Des Moines St. NE, when this month's fire started. Sanchez was in surgery in an Orlando-area hospital and her kids were staying with their aunt in Pinellas Park.
For Sanchez's son, Johnnie Tarver, Feb. 12 was supposed to be a special day; it was his 12th birthday. While playing football with his cousins, he heard the news of the fire.
"I was mad, because we were about to have a party," he said. He never got to eat cake that day.
Both fires have fallen near the birthday of one of Sanchez's children.
The fire on Jan. 28, 2003, at 724 40th St. S ruined not only the vast majority of their possessions but also Jose Sanchez's eighth birthday the next day.
When that fire started around 10 p.m., Rosalie Sanchez woke up her two older children, who ran out of the house. But it took her a minute to find Jose on the eve of his birthday. She needed to wake him to get him out of the window to escape.
"I'm like "Baby, baby, wake up, it's the only way we can get out of here,"' Rosalie Sanchez recalled. "I said, "Baby, if you want to make it for your birthday ... If you don't go, I don't go.
"It felt like hell. I've never been to hell, but that's what it felt like."
Sanchez managed to wake her son but ended up in the hospital with smoke inhalation. While the second fire caused no physical damage, it reopened the emotional wounds of the first experience.
The first fire transformed Sanchez's life, made her just want to stay home and watch the kids. If she fell asleep at night, she worried, what might happen to Rosita, Johnnie and Jose?
Rosita Tarver, 13, changed from a regular teenager to a conscientious daughter and older sister. She would say no to social plans if it meant leaving her brothers alone.
"I'm scared whatever might happen to them," she said. "I have to take them wherever I go."
After the first fire, Rosita said, she and her family had to buy all new belongings. Now those belongings, from clothes down to the rocking chair, are either destroyed or covered with the sickening scent of smoke.
"Try washing some clothes that have "only a little bit of smoke' on them - just the smell of the smoke made me sick," Rosalie Sanchez said. "Nothing was salvageable this time, nothing was salvageable last time. We have to start from scratch."
With no renter's insurance on either house, all of her possessions have gone up in smoke for the second time in 13 months. Her sisters and mother are lending moral support and what money they have, but she said she does not know where she will go from here.
For now, the Sanchezes will stay in the Orlando area with Rosalie's mother, as they try to recoup from two devastating losses.
"I want to get another apartment or house but I'm scared," Rosalie Sanchez said. "I might not have been there this time around, but I feel like I was."
