By Keira Canan

It was a Friday in January. Theresa Corripio, of Carbon County, was taking her 3-year-old daughter to preschool while her two teenagers were out shopping for Corripio’s upcoming birthday with their grandmother. It was about as normal as any day could get – until it wasn’t.

When Corripio, a nurse, returned home after having been gone only 10 minutes, smoke poured from the windows of her multi-family home. She called 911 and immediately tried to save her beloved animals - five cats and one dog - before the smoke and flames made it impossible to get them all out safely. Tragically, the family dog, Luna, passed away in the fire.

Home fires like Corripio’s are the nation’s most frequent disaster, including in Pennsylvania, where already this year, the American Red Cross of Greater Pennsylvania has responded to nearly 600 home fires in just the first four months of 2025.

“It’s kind of a blur. I don’t remember much,” Corripio said, recounting the day of the fire. “There were so many people and so many things going on. I’ve never felt so helpless. I couldn’t do anything but sit back and watch everything I worked hard for just go up in flames, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.”

In all the confusion of the day, Corripio didn’t notice that the Red Cross already stood ready to help. It wasn’t until two days later when one of her tenants contacted her for a meeting with the Red Cross Disaster Action Team that she realized they had been there from the start.

After a home fire, Red Cross Disaster Action Team volunteers meet with the families affected and provide immediate support, including emergency lodging, financial assistance and emotional support. In the days and weeks after the fire, Red Cross volunteers will continue to follow up with those affected to help create a recovery plan to help families get back on their feet.

Connecting with the Disaster Action Team eased the burden for both Corripio’s family and her tenants. The Disaster Action Team also connected her with Red Cross health services volunteers who helped replace prescription eyeglasses that were lost in the fire for both her and her daughter. Corripio said the recovery team walked her family through everything.

“They stayed with us. They called us a couple of times a week to make sure everything was okay, that we had everything we needed, to see if there was anything else they could do to help. I was so overwhelmed with everything after the fire that I even ended up misplacing the card with emergency funds that they gave me. Within a couple of hours, I had a new card issued and I was able to continue getting what I needed,” she said.

As her family continues to recover following the loss of their home, Corripio encourages others who find themselves in a similar situation to connect with the Red Cross.

“I’m not one to ask for help, but at that time, in that moment, I needed it, and I was glad that there was somebody that could help me and has experience dealing with this,” Corripio said.

Thanks to generous donations, the Red Cross services that Corripio and her family received are free and available for all those in need. If you’d like to help support our lifesaving work, visit redcross.org.