(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Going into December, Carlos Cardona and his family were ecstatic to move into a new home, with their current apartment unit filled with their belongings. In November, they finalized the purchase of their home and were packing up their unit at Quail Cove Apartments when tragedy unexpectedly struck.
“This was a very rude awakening on Friday, December 1st,” Cardona said. “It was at about 1:10/1:15 a.m. in the morning when I heard a yelling and I almost dismissed it as a couples fight and then realized that it was serious because I heard the word ‘help’ and the yelling of ‘help,’ I jump out of the bed, went to look out the window and realized there was fire.”
In a matter of seconds, Cardona alerted his whole family who were sleeping inside, waking up his mother-in-law, his son James, and his wife Megan Burnell.
“It was incredible how the time just went by so quickly, went down to a safe area and I called 911,” Cardona said. “At that time, they were probably swamped with calls for the same situation. But that was my reaction.”
The Colorado Springs Fire Department (CSFD) responded to the fire at Quail Cove Apartments with 55 personnel. According to CSFD, 30 people were displaced and all residents made it out safely.
“I’m so glad we were able to make it out alive, that my whole family is safe, including my mother,” Megan Burnell said. “My mother was visiting and my little boy who had really a good reaction.”
While the family is thankful to be healthy and to have a place to go, they are left wondering what can be salvaged inside and how they can continue moving forward.
“So, our family is intact, but it is really daunting to have to rebuild,” Burnell said. “As grateful as we are that we have somewhere to land, and we have a home and it feels like we don’t deserve to complain because we’re so lucky to have made it out alive and to have landed in our own home that we just purchased.”
Leading up to the fire, Burnell had been cleaning and packing up the unit, so the family was ready for the big move.
“There’s so much work ahead and it’s probably going to be impossible to get most of it out,” Burnell said. “It’s just, it’s devastating to work so hard for something and then to just have it just gone. So, I am sad and angry and sad and also really grateful that we were fortunate enough to make it out as well as we did.”
One of Cardona’s coworkers created a GoFundMe page to help the family out during this troubling time.
“She helped me to set up a fund because I wouldn’t even have an idea where to start,” Cardona said.
A link to support the family can be found here: aside form monetary donations, the family is also asking for gift cards to help them purchase clothes along with household items that were lost in the fire.
The Cardona family are among many residents who were displaced and now are left looking at the scorched skeleton of the building they once called home. Cardona expressed his hope that other neighbors can also receive support from the community.
“The community, if they can reach out to the leasing office and I don’t know, maybe create a fund or something to help the other families,” Cardona said. “I feel that we have been so blessed to have so many people that have a step forward and help us out.”
Amidst the devastation, the family is able to maintain an outlook filled with gratitude for their safety and delving deeper to find the motivation to persevere.
“You just have to keep going,” Burnell said. “You… can’t stop. It is a difficult time. Especially, I had already wrapped the Christmas presents and packed them to be ready to open in the new house and I know there is a box up there full of wrapped Christmas presents. So, that’s a little frustrating. But it’s only stuff, it still was nice stuff, and it was our stuff.”
