A mother’s cry … ‘Julio! Abby!’
‘Everything was black. I couldn’t see anything.’ Community rallies around singlemom whose children were wounded after inferno erupted in San Jose dwelling
SAN JOSE — Amelia Gomez’s life is here now, inside Valley Medical Center’s burn unit, where one child is wrapped head to toe in white gauze and the other is only beginning to breathe again on her own.
She hasn’t left since a raging fire destroyed her apartment last week, burning her 12-year-old daughter, Abigail, and 10-year-old son, Julio, and forcing them to jump from the second-story window into the arms of good Samaritans below.
“I have nowhere else to go,” Gomez said Wednesday.
For now — and for who knows how long — this is where she belongs.
This is where she sits beside her children and prays. This is where the first police officers and firefighters who responded that morning come to visit, where
neighbors bring balloons and cards, and friends deliver meals. And it is here that she met another mother — 40 years old, just like Gomez — who knows firsthand the long recovery ahead for a young son severely burned.
Julio is suffering the most. With burns covering more than half his body, his arms and legs are suspended above his bed. All his mother can see through the bandages are his eyes, which are closed while he remains in a medically induced coma.
Abigail is improving, her breathing tube recently removed. She is listed now in good condition, with burns mostly under her arms. But she can’t sleep, fearing another fire. And her mother breaks down in tears, sobbing, playing over and over in her mind those nine horrifying minutes she left home to take her eldest daughter to summer school nearby.
In Gomez’s own words and in interviews with neighbors, passers-by and law enforcement officers, the traumatic events of that Thursday morning unfold in terrifying detail. The fire started in the kitchen, firefighters say, but the cause is still under investigation. Gomez, a single mother who works as a housekeeper, told police she hadn’t used the electric stove since the night before, but that she had complained to the landlord that it had been sparking and smelling like burning wire. She also had requested a smoke detector but never got one.
Gomez told police her two youngest children were sleeping in separate bedrooms when she left with her older daughter before 8 a.m.
Passers-by along Story Road were the first to see smoke pouring from the second-story window.
Monique Barajas, 34, called 911 and pulled over when she saw Abigail screaming from the open window. A man who had been riding his bike down the street also stopped.
“I told her, ‘ Just jump and we’ll catch your fall!’ ” Barajas said. “She jumped forward.”
When she looked up, she saw Julio, still in the windowsill crying.
“You need to jump! Be brave. We’ll catch you,” Barajas told the boy.
Abigail also called out, “Jump, Julio! Jump!”
Julio was terrified. But finally, he built up the courage and jumped, too. Once on the grass, “He started to panic. He was looking at his body from the burns,” Barajas said. She told him to stay still.
By then, Gomez was returning home, racing across the courtyard and up the stairs. Two neighbors had kicked in the door and were quieting the flames in the kitchen and living room with fire extinguishers as Gomez rushed inside.
“Julio! Abby!” she called out. “Everything was black. I couldn’t see anything.”
She felt for them through the thick smoke, in their beds where she left them, on the floor and in the closets — but found nothing. Then, gasping for air, she spotted the open window in the second bedroom, and saw her children writhing on the grass below.
“I ran to them,” she said, breaking into tears.
When she reached Julio, all he could say was, “It’s burning. It’s burning.”
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Hee Kang, who has owned the Sunny Apartments complex for more than 30 years, says he feels “very, very sorry to the people living in 24, the lady and the two children. Nevertheless, it wasn’t our fault. If the fire was caused by malfunction, we would be responsible. I don’t think the stove was the problem there.”
He said he was not aware of complaints from Apartment No. 24. His son, the manager, lives downstairs.
“If there was a complaint, we would go and fix it,” he said.
Within hours of the fire, San Jose’s code enforcement removed nearly two dozen stoves from the apartments, saying other tenants also complained of sparks and burning wires. But Kang doesn’t believe they had good reason. “Codewise, they’re working fine,” he said. “They should leave them there,” he said. Instead, though, he is buying new ones. The first replacements arrived Wednesday.
Valley Medical Center has a room and shower set up for Gomez close to the children. She’s not sure how long she can stay, but social workers are trying to arrange more permanent housing. Her closest relative, a brother, lives in Tracy.
“They basically lost everything,” said San Jose police Detective Elizabeth Ramirez, who was on patrol when the fire broke out and was one of the first to respond. “She does everything she can for her children. She’s just so grateful her children are alive.”
Early on, they weren’t sure Julio would survive. Now, they expect he will remain in the hospital for months and the surgeries will go on for years.
Through the San Jose Police Officers Association, Ramirez has set up an account for people to donate at www.sjpoa.com.
In the burn unit, nurses connected Gomez with Margarita Flores, whose 12-year-old son, Edgar, has undergone numerous surgeries, including one on Tuesday, since he was burned in a car accident eight years ago. Flores introduced Gomez to her son, who said he is doing well and promised that Julio will be OK.
“Edgar is going to help Julio. He wants to be Julio’s friend,” Flores said. “And I’m going to be here for Amelia, because she needs a lot of help.”