LAWRENCE — A year after "losing everything" to a fire that burned a city block, Jannette Ayala remains haunted by a worse nightmare.
She agonizes over what would have happened had she and her boyfriend, Luis Taveras, not awoken to a knock on the door as flames devoured the Springfield Street apartment building where they lived with two infant children.
Ayala, 20, trembles at the thought of perishing in the inferno with her boyfriend, two young children and their twin boys who were not yet born.
"When I drive by Springfield Street, I can't even look at it anymore," she said of the building where she lived until it was destroyed by fire last Jan. 21. "What if I didn't wake up when the landlord's brother knocked on the door? That's tough to think about."
Grateful to be alive and living with Taveras in a new apartment on Hampshire Street, the 12 months since the fire have still been difficult.
She eventually had to have a caesarian section for the twin baby boys, who, along with her two older children, are now in the custody of the state Department of Social Services. The bills are mounting up while she and Taveras are unemployed.
"It's been a tough year," said Ayala, who longs to get a job, move into a larger apartment and be reunited with her four children.
Looking on the bright side, Taveras adds, "we're still here and surviving."
'It could have been a lot worse'
The day of the fire was a day of hundreds of heroic deeds and acts of kindness that began when emergency medical technicians Brian Prendergast and Christopher Baker of Patriot Ambulance noticed the fire while responding to a call, and flagged down a police officer a block away.
Lawrence police Officer Robert Moody, 40, recalls being at the intersection of Merrimack and Parker streets when the ambulance, lights flashing and siren blaring, "came flying by" and stopped. One of the EMTs yelled at him about "the huge fire down the street.
"It was so bad when I was driving up Parker Street, I could feel the heat coming through the side window of my cruiser with the window up," Moody said, "and this was a bitterly cold night."
Soon after, he was joined by Sgt. John Dushame, other officers and firefighters who began knocking on doors in a hurried evacuation of the buildings.
After helping to evacuate dozens of people out the burning buildings into a bone-chilling night with a temperature of 12 degrees, the rescuers encountered other problems.
First, there was no place to go for the people, who stood shivering in the street, "out there in their pajamas or whatever else they wore to bed," Moody said.
"They really had no place to go, and we had to worry about hypothermia," he said. "Luckily, we had people in houses across the street who were willing to take these people in until a shelter could be set up."
There was also the threat of the fire spreading and burning even more buildings.
"The wind was blowing flames onto houses. While we were on Springfield Street, embers the size of baseballs were coming down," Moody said.
But firefighters from the city and neighboring communities showed up en masse.
"They fought long and hard," Moody said. "I never saw so many firetrucks at the scene in my 14 years."
Fire Chief Peter Takvorian believes "the hand of God was at work" that night.
"There was far more potential for devastation than what occurred," he said. "It could have been a lot worse.
"If I looked at that objectively — knowing something about fires — I would have been astounded that nobody was killed or badly injured."
The wintry conditions couldn't have been much worse for the firefighters responding to the 2:30 a.m. blaze. A strong wind made the 12-degree weather seem more like zero.
"It seemed like a long, continuous night that I didn't know when it would end," Takvorian said, "until the next morning when the sun came up and we realized we were making progress in confining the fire."
He recalled a key turning point came when firefighters saved a three-story, six-family house at the corner of Parker and Springfield streets.
"The fact that our effort was successful kept all the other buildings on that side of the street from going down like dominos," Takvorian said.
Unsung heroes
While firefighters from across the Valley teamed up to fight the fire, there were other unsung heroes tending to the victims.
Deb Duxbury, director of emergency services at the Haverhill-based American Red Cross of the Merrimack Valley, knew it was going to be a challenging day when she left her Methuen home.
"I could see the flames while getting into my car that morning," recalled Duxbury, who led an effort that involved five Red Cross staff and 57 volunteers. They wound up assisting 26 families totaling 143 people.
"I was at the scene at quarter of 4 and probably left there at 2 a.m. the next morning," she said.
Red Cross efforts were initially hampered because it took a while to determine exactly how many people needed assistance.
But the task got easier because of the eagerness of numerous people who collaborated — neighbors, civilians, human service organizations, city workers and emergency service personnel.
Duxbury recalled the generosity of Cor Unum Meal Center, located two blocks away, which opened its doors to the fire victims, serving hot meals. That got the people out of the cold and enabled the Red Cross to begin interviewing the displaced residents while plans were made to open a shelter.
"The community outpouring on this was tremendous," she said. "We had restaurants calling, offering food. The city wound up collecting used furniture and used clothing. A lot of people were calling, asking how they could help."
The shelter only stayed open for three nights, as the fire victims found new homes or were able to stay with family and friends.
By mid-June, all of the families the Red Cross assisted had been relocated — some of them several times.
A promise to rebuild
Jayan Landry, executive director and founder of Trauma Intervention Program of the Merrimack Valley, said fire Capt. James Loffreddo called TIP to provide emotional first aid to those who were burned out of their homes.
TIP responded by sending eight volunteers to the homeless shelter at the South Lawrence East School. They worked a combined 48 hours that day, assisting more than 40 adults and children.
Many of the fire victims at the shelter were people with special needs who lived in a group home that was destroyed by the fire. The TIP volunteers shared information and provided support to decrease their anxiety.
Larry Sharp, executive director of Merrimack Valley Habitat for Humanity, said his group has invested 25,000 hours rebuilding four homes on Market Street that were destroyed by the fire.
Two are for families that were preparing to move in at the time of the blaze. Two were for families who hadn't been identified yet.
"We made a promise to the people that we would rebuild, and it's a promise we kept," Sharp said.
He said the single family home will be ready within two months. A duplex will be ready for two other families by the middle of the year, and two other duplexes under construction will be ready in late 2010 or early 2011.
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