Waltham Rallies To Help Families After Adams Street Fire

WALTHAM, MA — A week after a fire ripped through a home on Adams Street, displacing three families, community members have rallied to raise money and collect goods to help the families get a new start.

On Saturday, May 25, three families lost everything in the three-alarm fire. The house consisted of four apartments, three of which were occupied by the Gonzalez family. Carlos and Hilda Gonzalez, Danilo and Paola Gonzalez and children, Marvin and Ana Rivas and children, and Delmy Cardona were all displaced by the fire.

Everyone got out safe, but the families lost nearly everything. A family member of the Gonzalez family took to the crowd-source funding platform GoFundMe to help the families rebuild their lives.

"When the house fire began, some of them did not even have shoes as they ran to safety, and the money raised ... will help buy necessities," posted Jennifer Gonzalez on behalf of her relative Carlos.

Elizabeth Dragone who lives nearby went to the fire and was standing next to two of the residents as they watched their home burn.

"It broke my heart. I promised them I would do what ever I could to help them," she said. About a dozen years earlier she'd had a furnace fire at her house and she remembered how much people had reached out to help her at her family's time of need.

When she got home, she put up a note on Facebook calling for clothes and goods to help the families, offering her house as a dropoff point.

"The response was amazing," she said. "There were tons of people dropping bags and items off at my house for them," she said in a message to Patch.

Donations filled an entire work truck just 36 hours after the fire, said Dragone, and they're still coming in.

The families, who are staying at a hotel while looking for new apartments, have come by to pick up the loads. Dragone said they've been storing the stuff at a friend's house and plan to divide it equally between them.

On top of that, some 200 people raised nearly $18,000 for the Gonzalez family, and some 85 people raised $5,400 for Marilyn Perez's family.

The families expressed their gratitude.

"We’re beyond thankful to every single one of you guys," Gonzalez posted to GoFundMe. "We have received MAJOR support from our beautiful Waltham community.... People who we don’t even know [us] are organizing others for donations, people are asking in random group pages who the affected were and how they can help. I mean, the support is absolutely mind-blowing! We are so eternally grateful. My family is homeless, but every single one of you guys are a push of not only financial but emotional support. All of you are a little spark of light shinning at the end of the tunnel for them right now, and as more join to help the light gets a little brighter and brighter. "

The three families are planning to use the money from GoFundMe to find apartments, hopefully around $2,000 a month rent, and then to buy furniture, they said.

The Adams Street building, although updated since, was built around 1900 and was listed as having an asbestos exterior, according to city data. There were four units in the building. The property was last assessed at $553,600.

To donate via GoFundMe there are 2 funds:

• Gonzalez family fund.
• And this fund.

Related:

3 Alarm Fire On Adams Street In Waltham

Patch reporter Jenna Fisher can be reached at Jenna.Fisher@patch.com or by calling 617-942-0474. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@ReporterJenna).