Brianna Cisneros is weeks away from her due date. To celebrate her birthday on Wednesday, she and her husband spent time nesting and decorating their nursery in preparation for the birth of their son, Sparrow.
Cisneros and her husband, Matthew Evans, had just moved into their Murray apartment on Monday. In the very early morning hours of Thursday, after a tiring day, her husband was telling her a story to get to sleep when they heard noises in the unit above them.
Minutes later, the couple watched from across the street in their pajamas as their new apartment was engulfed by fire.
“I’m watching literally our whole life go up in flames,” Cisneros said.
The blaze at Stillwater Apartments is one of five fires this week, and six in the past two weeks, to destroy or damage apartment buildings along the Wasatch Front. Police arrested a 27-year-old man Thursday on suspicion of aggravated arson at Stillwater Apartments. Fifty residents have been displaced altogether, according to FOX 13. And two families are left without their homes weeks before the birth of their children.
Jordan Watts and Jazmin Dealmeida moved to Stillwater Apartments in February. Watt’s father Bryan and Cisneros’ mother each organized GoFundMe pages to support their children, with Watt’s having raised $3,800 and Cisneros’ at $4,800 as of Friday afternoon.
Like Cisneros and Evans, Watts and Dealmeida’s apartment alarms did not go off during the fire. Instead, they were alerted to the blaze when their dogs started barking. The couple lived on the third floor of the building. When they finally made it outside, Watts hurried his girlfriend away from the smoke and the fire.
“We just went and stayed at her sister’s house,” Watts said. “We came back around 6 o’clock, and we saw our apartment was a total loss.”
For Evans and Cisneros, it also seemed like the fire spread in seconds. Evans heard banging and shouting above their apartment at around 2:30 a.m. and got out of bed to see what was going on. She said as soon as Evans opened the door they heard a man screaming “Fire, get out!” Then the couple ran from the apartment with only their dogs and what they were wearing.
“At that point, the time we had run out, the upstairs apartment above us was already engulfed in flames,” Cisneros said. “Flames were already pouring out the window. The ceiling of the apartment complex was already up in flames, like it was that intense. When we were in bed we didn’t hear it, we didn’t smell it, our alarm didn’t go off.”
Evans noticed they didn’t have their IDs, car keys or wallets when they got outside, so he ran back into the unit to retrieve them.
“He was in there for like 18 seconds, and he didn’t find our keys, he couldn’t find our IDs, but he was able to grab his glasses and his phone,” Cisneros said. “When he was running back out, the unit above ours, the windows exploded. Embers fell and like, fire and stuff fell, and it caught his hair and his beard on fire. He burned his hand putting it out. And at that point, I’m like freaking out on the floor, having contractions because I’m so stressed.”
Cisneros and Evans watched their apartment burn for around 35 to 40 minutes. She had to be attended to by EMTs for smoke inhalation and due to her contractions. At that moment she just wanted her mother.
A neighbor comforted Cisneros outside of the building and invited her to her residence to get away from the smoke. She waited there while her mother drove to pick the couple and their dogs up.
“We’ve had a hard year because the baby, he has kidney problems, he’s most likely going to need a stint at one month of life, postpartum,” Cisneros said. “We had to see an echocardiologist. ... I had extreme hyperemesis gravidarum — like my morning sickness was horrible, I was losing weight, I was on IVs. I had to do iron infusions, because I was so anemic, and to see my doctor twice a week. And then at one point I saw them every day of the week.
“It was a hard pregnancy. And we were staying with my mother-in-law to save up money and pay off our debt, and all these things for when the baby would come. And like the second we move out and have our funds set up, and we’re looking forward to having our own place… our apartment catches on fire. It’s just been a hard week.”
Both families are staying with relatives for the time being. Watts and Dealmeida are looking for a new residence — this time it won’t be an apartment. “We’re just rebuilding our lives, pretty much,” Watts said.
Cisneros said the Red Cross is helping with donations and getting hotels for residents without a place to stay, and the organization checked up on them to make sure they were accounted for and in a safe temporary residence.
“We were just talking about it the day before the fire, how we were like, ‘We have a good feeling about this place,’” Evans said. “[The apartment company] told us they would either find us a unit there if they have one available, but it’s really hard to right now with so many people displaced, or they could take a look and see if one of their sister companies ... had something available and they could give us a discounted rate, but they didn’t tell us what the discount would be or how long it would be before they could find anything.”
With all the stress and chaos the fire has caused the two couples, both said it has been heartwarming to see the support the community and their families have provided for them before their sons are born by the end of the month.
“It’s stressful not having a lot of the stuff that we had. But we have a good support system that’s helping us bring it all back together,” Watts said. “[The GoFundMe is] amazing — any little donations help, it’s truly a blessing. I’m super thankful for people helping out.”
Editor’s note • The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.
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