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Home Sports Briefs Mobile home fire in St. Cloud leaves seven homeless
Mobile home fire in St. Cloud leaves seven homeless PDF Print E-mail
County News
Wednesday, 09 March 2011 14:13

StCloudFire03

News-Gazette Photo/Fallan Patterson
Rafael Pizzaro, 22, carries a smoke-damaged computer tower Monday from the St. Cloud mobile home he and six others lived in before it was gutted by fire Sunday morning.
By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer
Rafael Pizzaro spent Monday sifting through soot-covered personal belongings in the two-bedroom St. Cloud mobile home he and six family members lived in before a cigarette-induced fire Sunday morning rendered them homeless. The mobile home’s windows are blackened and soot clings to the exterior walls and door frames where the flames licked their way outside; burnt remnants of children’s toys, bric-a-brac and other household items are strewn about the yard.
An entire extended family – a mother, her three adult children, including Pizzaro, two grandchildren, ages 1 and 6 weeks, and a soon-to-be daughter-in-law – are out of a home after their St. Cloud mobile home burned down before dawn Sunday morning in The Mark mobile home park.
“We lost pretty much everything,” Pizzaro, whose mother, Claribel Pagan, was renting the destroyed mobile home at 524 Arizona Ave. since January 2010, said. “We lost all of our grandma’s stuff, stuff that’s irreplaceable. That’s the only thing I’m worried about.”
According to dispatch logs, the call about the fire was placed at 5:44 a.m. Sunday, when eight people were in the home. Pagan was not in the home at the time but two male friends of her daughters were there for a party, the report said.
One of the men was thought to be missing and still inside the home but was found passed out drunk in a vehicle in the front yard more than an hour after the initial 9-1-1 call.
“They shouldn’t have been here,” Pizzaro said. “All they care about is partying and drinking.”
It may have been those activities that caused one of the men to fall asleep with a lit cigarette, causing the fire, St. Cloud Fire Rescue Fire Marshal David M. Ennis, said.
“They were smoking in the bedroom and they fell asleep and it got in the mattress. They admitted to smoking,” Ennis said. “We ruled out electric (as the cause) and that was the only thing left.”
Ennis determines the causes and origins of fires in St. Cloud and has been with the fire department there for 27 years.
“They said it was accidental,” Pizzaro said.
A total of five people were injured, included two infants, but none of the injuries were life-threatening, St. Cloud Fire Chief Bill Johnston said. Of the five injured, all but one adult male were transported to area hospitals for further evaluation.
Pizzaro said he was just thankful the injuries were not more severe.
“That’s the important thing,” he said. “We’ll recover everything else.”
Pizzaro, a taxi driver, also lost the $270 he was saving to pay for semi-truck driving school, which he was scheduled to begin Saturday.
He was permitted to enter the condemned structure Monday to try to salvage any belongings in the living room only. The remainder of the home was deemed structurally unsound. Pizzaro removed many items, including his mother’s dolphin statutes, covered in black soot or with water damage.
The family had five dogs in the home at the time of the fire. Pizzaro said that when his sister awoke to find the home ablaze and yelled for everyone to leave, Pizzaro was throwing dogs out the front door to save them. Unfortunately, a 6-year-old female poodle named Everything died from smoke inhalation. Osceola County Animal Control is temporarily sheltering the other dogs until the family finds more permanent housing.
“I’ve been crying all night,” Pizzaro said. “I think I’m out of tears.”
Members of the family have lost almost everything they own. To make donations, including clothing and furniture, contact Pizzaro at 407-431-5528.
 

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