MIDLAND, Texas — On March 3, a fire at the Meridian Apartment Homes demolished an entire building. Now, it has left 40 people who lived there with only ashes in sight.
"It's a total loss, that one structure is a total loss," said Brian McGary, the assistant chief with the Midland Fire Department.
Naile Baulino and her extended family lived in five of the eight units that completely collapsed.
"We're sad because we lost everything, we didn’t lose our lives which is the most important thing, but [we lost] all of our personal belongings," said Baulino.
Firefighters managed to contain the blaze to a single building on the west wing while also battling the western winds that came in at 30 mph, according to McGary.
"We had one hydrant that was right there on scene that we couldn't get shut down. But we had other hydrants in the area that we ended up using," McGary said. "So even if that fire hydrant was working, we were still going to use other hydrants as well."
The complex had smoke and fire venting out when crews arrived. Everyone managed to get out safely, with no injuries reported.
"One comes here with the dream in mind that we’re going to progress," said Angel Baulino, another former resident who lost his home to the blaze. "After everything I worked hard for now the little bit we had is all gone. It's all turned to ashes."
According to Disaster Action Team Coordinator for the American Red Cross, Shane Bell, the American Red Cross was dispatched by the fire department to meet with the families affected to get them help throughout the first 48 hours. They helped by providing food, shelter and clothing as financial assistance.
"Initially [they] worked with some hotels to get some discounted rates last night so the families could go stay in there in a hotel," Bell said. "As far as I know, [victims who] had insurance so the insurance companies that the coverage covers that will take over the the hotels from there and work through their process of getting them into a new home or maybe relocating them to another apartment."
According to Bell, the Red Cross will start calling the families individually and start working through what it calls a "recovery plan."
"A lot of them are just grateful that someone's here to help and to help them get started but they're still kind of in shock," Bell said. "We have other programs like mental health programs to work with the families with a licensed mental health worker to talk to the kids because they get affected by this greatly since it's traumatic. So we have that we also have our disaster health services that work with medications and working through anything that was lost in the fire, as well as providing help through our spiritual care team."
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.