From Total Loss to Feeling Whole Again: Steve’s Post-Fire Recovery
Early morning on Sept. 23, the sun had not even risen yet before Steve suddenly rose from his bed inside his Ellettsville apartment. It wasn’t an alarm that woke him at 4 a.m. that particular Wednesday. It was the smell of smoke.
Steve crawled out of bed and went to his kitchen looking for smoke. Despite smelling something unusual, Steve couldn’t find anything. He returned to his bedroom and laid back down.
After barely an hour and a half of additional rest, everything changed in an instant.
“At 6:30 a.m., they were beating my windows down and trying to get me up,” Steve recalled.
Steve did smell smoke after all. Only by this point, the smoke consumed the entire multifamily home.
“I was beside myself,” he said. “It was really intimidating to know I had almost died in that thing.”
Steve’s caretaker arrived and provided support as firefighters rushed to put out the fire. He could feel the smoke still inside his lungs, which was especially tough on him as he was already dealing with COPD and emphysema.
After going into a coma in 2023, dealing with various health challenges, and losing his dog in July, Steve has been no stranger to hardship. And this time, he wasn’t sure what to do next after his apartment manager told him there was nothing they could do to help.
“I was on my own,” he said.
But Steve said he felt like everything changed when the Red Cross got involved.
“The Red Cross showed up and they took over,” he said. “It made me feel whole again.”
Red Cross teams provided Steve with a blanket, helped connect him to various local agencies, and provided him with financial assistance.
“They did huge things for me,” he said. “They didn’t let up.”
Steve stayed with a friend after the fire and he recently moved into a new apartment on Oct. 31. He said he is beyond grateful for the support he received from the Red Cross.
“The Red Cross singlehandedly pulled me out of a gutter, a deep, deep depression and hole,” Steve said.
As Steve prepares to move into his new apartment a little more than five weeks since the fire, he said he feels compelled to always support the Red Cross mission from here on out.
“You see those Red Cross people out there, you donate to them,” he said. “If you don’t have money, come to me and I’ll donate. They didn’t let up until they knew I was whole.”
Written by Michael Van Schoik, Regional Communications Manager
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