Family and friends come together to help couple who lost everything in house fire

In an instant, they lost everything.

Carlos and Ida Flores are still trying to grasp the magnitude of their loss: the home they’ve lived in for eight years, all of their personal belongings — and, possibly, their precious cat Fiona.

The Calverton couple lost everything but the clothes they were wearing when a fire destroyed their home in the Lakewood mobile home park Wednesday morning.

Ida Flores and her sister, who was visiting from Florida for the holidays, were both in their pajamas, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company.

“She told me she smelled something funny,” Flores said. “My sense of smell is bad, so I looked around and when I looked in the laundry room I saw smoke coming from the dryer.” She opened the dryer door to find blackened clothing. Thick smoke came billowing out. Flores unplugged the machine and opened a window but the smoke quickly set off the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. “It was so thick, we started coughing right away.

“I said ‘We have to get out of here,’ and we ran out of the house in our pajamas,” Flores said.

Firefighters began arriving — a neighbor who’d seen the smoke had called 911. She used a neighbor’s phone to call her husband, who was not at home when tragedy struck. 

“I’m just praying my little baby cat got out alive… my sweet little girl,” Flores said, becoming emotional. “Everything else — everything burned, but I hope she made it out.” The kitten, which the couple rescued just before the holidays, hasn’t been seen since the fire, she said. Her next-door neighbor set up a little house outside to give the cat warm shelter and a bed in case she escaped. “I’m so worried she went and hid under a bed or something,” Flores said.

A retired teaching assistant who now works four days a week for BOCES doing home visits, Flores, 78, says she loves children and loves her job. “It doesn’t even feel like work because I love it so much,” she said. “I gave my children that advice. Do what you love and you’ll never have to ‘work’ a day in your life.” All three of her daughters became teachers.

Carlos Flores, 80, is a retired accountant. They rely on his social security check and her income to make ends meet. Unfortunately, they let their home insurance lapse this year, because it got too expensive, Flores said. It was a decision they now regret mightily.

They bought the mobile home in 2009 from Diana Ruvolo, who moved to another unit around the corner because a fire in the home next door had claimed the life of her best friend that May.

“I couldn’t take looking at it,” Ruvolo said, “and when this home went up for sale, I grabbed it.” Now, a home a few doors down from Ruvolo’s is unoccupied because the homeowner passed away. That woman’s son offered the home, which is furnished, to the Flores family so they’d have a place to stay. He paid the January rent, too.

“We’re very grateful,” Ida Flores said. “We have shelter and some time to figure out what we’re going to do now.”

Ashlë Rastello, one of the couple’s six grandchildren, said her grandparents “have always given more to others before even thinking of themselves.” She said she hopes all that “good karma will come back to them” in their time of need.

A close family friend started a GoFundMe page to raise money to help them put the pieces of their lives back together.

“I didn’t even know she did that,” Flores said. “That was so nice.”

“To know this family is to know love and compassion,” Amber Cassaro Amature wrote on the GoFundMe site.

Known to all as “Abukia” and “Tata” — nicknames given by their grandchildren— they have always been first to lend a giving hand to all in need, Amature wrote.

Rastello said a quote from her grandmother’s favorite book, “The Little Prince,” describes her grandparents perfectly: “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched. They are felt with the heart.”

Despite the tragedy they endured this week and the uncertainty of their future, Flores brims with pride when she talks about her family, which in the end, she says, is all that really matters. She describes each of them in loving detail — their families, their jobs, even their SAT scores.

“I’m so grateful,” she said.”When I go to church Sunday, I will be on my knees thanking God for sparing our lives and for blessing us with such wonderful family, friends and neighbors — and for the responders who came to save us. They were wonderful,” Flores said. “You couldn’t wish for better people when you have a problem like that.”