Jose Daniel Soto Arroyo, a former West Virginia University Institute of Technology baseball player, Juan Suarez Trujillo, a former soccer player for the school, and Zhu Lingxi, a recent business management graduate, all lived on the second floor of the building in Montgomery, which was estimated to be about 100 years old.
Suarez Trujillo’s mother and sister had surprised him by coming in for his graduation ceremony Saturday from their hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and they were all in his apartment Sunday evening when smoke started filling the air.
“I didn’t know what it was,” Suarez Trujillo recalled. “I thought maybe my mom was cooking something but there was nothing in the oven, so I opened the door of the apartment and it was all black smoke. It was bad.”
The building, located at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Ferry Street, continued to smolder Monday morning as Montgomery firefighter Arik McGinnis doused the debris with water. McGinnis was one of the first firefighters on the scene after a fire with entrapment was called in around 7:40 p.m. Sunday evening, and he said he had only gotten about 15 minutes of sleep Sunday night as he continued working the fire the next day.
“When we first got here we searched the top floors and couldn’t find anybody. Everybody had gotten out,” McGinnis said. “That’s when we started going into fire attack. We located the fire and got what we thought was a pretty good knock-down but it had already gotten too far ahead of us. It had gotten into the walls so there wasn’t much we could do then.”
Suarez Trujillo said he had tried to go down the stairwell to open the door leading to the street, but he was forced back by the heat and smoke. He gathered his family and Lingxi into his apartment, where he admitted things got desperate as smoke continued filling the building.
Drew Martin, a maintenance worker for the building across the street, and Joe Sampson, a coal worker, were reportedly in the Eagles Club on the ground floor of the adjacent building when the fire broke out. Martin grabbed a 12-foot ladder and he and Sampson put the ladder against a small platform outside Suarez Trujillo’s bedroom window.
Suarez Trujillo, his family, and Lingxi were able to escape safely down the ladder before firefighters arrived on the scene.
Benny Filiaggi, deputy chief of Montgomery Fire Department, said the situation became too dangerous for his firefighters to continue fighting the fire. There was a risk of the flames spreading to adjacent buildings, so firefighters worked defensively and strategically tore the building down on itself.
“These older buildings, they’re a type three construction, so they’re brick on the outside and nothing but old wood on the inside,” Filiaggi said. “They get going pretty good. We worked pretty hard but we don’t take any unnecessary chances with the guys.”
The bottom floor consisted of boarded-up former businesses that were being used as storage, Filiaggi said. One family was displaced from an adjacent building due to water damage, and the three student occupants have found other places to stay. But Soto Arroyo and Suarez Trujillo said their visas and passports, and the visas and passports of their visiting family members, were lost in the flames.
Soto Arroyo’s mother, brother and sister-in-law were visiting from Venezuela. They had taken Soto Arroyo’s mother to a West Virginia Power game and dinner for Mother’s Day when Soto Arroyo received a call from a friend that his apartment had burned down. Soto Arroyo thought it was a joke.
“But then we came over here and on the way here I thought the coal mines were burning coal,” Soto Arroyo said. “But it was my apartment burning up. Everything was in there.”
Soto Arroyo didn’t know it at the time, but his mother, a college professor in Maracaibo, Venezuela, had brought him $8,000 in cash to put toward his tuition costs. The cash — along with everything else — was lost.
“It’s really hard when you work hard and I tried to show my mom what a great mom she is,” Soto Arroyo said. “But things are going to happen.”
Without passports, visas or working documents, Soto Arroyo and Suarez Trujillo said they’re not sure how their families will get back home. Suarez Trujillo said the nearest Argentinean consulate is in Washington, D.C. Even though his former apartment is walking distance from the Montgomery Amtrak station, which provides train service to the Capital three days a week, Suarez Trujillo can’t take the train without identifying documents.
“If you go back home, you can get IDs and they can get all the stuff together, but I had everything here so I don’t know how I’m going to get a driver’s license, I don’t know how I’m going to get a passport, I don’t know how I’m going to get anything,” Suarez Trujillo said. “Apparently if my mom and sister go to Washington where all the embassies are, they can get a passport somehow if they show a picture of one of the passports or IDs they have, but the problem is we can’t get to Washington.”
Soto Arroyo and his family are having the same problem. Soto Arroyo was supposed to fly to Miami on Tuesday to start a new job as an assistant coach at a high school baseball academy, and his family was slated to fly back to Venezuela on May 19, but their travel plans have now ground to a halt.
“All my papers burned up, so I’ve got to go through the whole process again,” Soto Arroyo said. “I’m not an American citizen so I have to show my visa, my passport, my permission to work, my Social Security number, and all of it burned.”
Soto Arroyo and Suarez Trujillo both said they’re thankful no one was injured or killed in the fire. Suarez Trujillo said he had dinner with his boss in Beckley, where he works at a manufacturing company, before the fire broke out but got back earlier than he expected. He fears Lingxi may not have been able to escape had he not been in his apartment when the fire broke out.
“After this situation, you realize that was not a safe place, honestly,” Suarez Trujillo said. “There was only one escape route and we were going to have to jump out of the window. That’s not safe at all.”
Soto Arroyo said his mother raised him alone in their home in Maracaibo, a city synonymous with Venezuela’s oil industry. As oil production has dwindled over the past decade, social unrest has skyrocketed. Soto Arroyo came to the United States to escape the issues and violence in his home country and to help his family out.
“Venezuela right now is in a real struggle, and that’s the main reason why I came to America,” Soto Arroyo said. “Venezuela has a lot of social and political problems, and (it’s) the third most dangerous country in the world. And that’s why you come here to pursue dreams and try to help your family, because in Venezuela the situation is not like here in the United States. This has made me stronger and I will never give up.”
Suarez Trujillo said he’s still waiting to hear back from the landlord about how he will be compensated for his losses, which include irreplaceable honors he’s received as a student-athlete at WVU Tech.
“I was on the soccer team for Tech and I won two national championships, and I have T-shirts signed from everyone on the team,” Suarez Trujillo said. “I have rings, I have awards, I have stuff like that. They’re just gone. It’s not like I can go and buy them.”
Jennifer Wood, spokeswoman for WVU Tech, said the university has extended assistance to the displaced students, including housing and assistance with getting their documentation back. She said the community has been extremely supportive of the three students and their families.
“We’re going to be in touch with them and their families to be what support we may be able to assist them with,” Wood said.
Filiaggi said the fire is not considered suspicious at this time, but it remains under investigation.
Contact writer Marcus Constantino at 304-348-1796 or [email protected]. Follow him at www.twitter.com/amtino.
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