'Not A Life For Me': LI Mom Separated From Kids After Home Blaze

FARMINGVILLE, NY — Working mom Gina Granados was going about her weekly routine, cleaning her home and preparing her children for school on Sunday, Sept. 18, when she had to leave briefly to pick her daughter up from a practice of her marching band.

Minutes later her son, Brian, who was bedridden and recuperating from a soccer injury, called to tell her that she needed to come back because their home of the past seven years home was on fire.

She thought he was joking and told him to stop.

"I'm like, Brian, that's not a joke to play," she recalled in a phone interview. "He was like, 'I am not joking.'"

As he became more frantic, she realized to her horror that he was telling the truth about their beloved home.

Somehow, Brian, who had been unable to move his leg due to a torn ligament, dragged himself out of the burning home.

"We literally don't know how he was able to escape," Granados said.

When she arrived back home, she tried to go back inside to rescue two dogs, a Guinea Pig, and a rabbit that she had been fostering until they found "forever homes," she said. But, Granados, who has asthma, was forced back outside the home by the billowing smoke.

Thankfully, a team of firefighters was able to save the animals, she said.

"No, no, no, no; I would die without them," she said. "They are my life."

Granados shared the home with Brian, as well as her two daughters, and her cousin, as well as the menagerie of animals, including her Doberman. But while the family still have each other, they lost most of their belongings in the blaze and they do not have any single place for them to live — together as a family.

The single mom, who works as a nurse's assistant at Stony Brook University Hospital, said she is now taking it one day at a time.

"It's the worst nightmare of my life," she said.

Granados is staying in a hotel funded by her renter's insurance, and her children are split between family and friends. Her insurance runs out at the end of the month — days away.

In the meantime, a family friend has launched a GoFundMe page to raise some money to help the family out.

So far, the page has raised $7,180 of its $20,000 goal.

Organizer Mara Chita has known Granados for about 10 years because their children played soccer together. She said she started the fundraiser after learning of the devastating fire because she could not imagine her family being torn apart at a time when they should be together coping through their loss together.

"To me, in circumstances like that, it would be the worst thing that could happen," she said. "Because, especially in circumstances like that, the family needs to be together, you know, to have a shoulder to cry on, not separate."

Granados said she would be grateful for anything that anyone can donate, no matter how small.

"I need to have a home where I can bring my kids home with me," Granados said. "I just don't need to have a bed. I don't need a living room. I don't need a dining room."

Granados, a native of Colombia, said she believes that if she continues working hard as she always has, she can make it work for her family. If she gives the best of herself, she believes that she will get back on her feet, but she admitted it might take several months to years to achieve that.

"But as long as I can keep my kids under the same roof, that's all I want," she said. "That's all I ask God — to please give me a home where I can bring my kids."

"This is my life," she added. "Living like this is not a life for me. It's destroying me inside every day not seeing my daughters and my kids together."

It's a nightmare Granados says she hopes no one ever goes through.

"I cannot even close my eyes and not see how the fire was in the kitchen," she said, adding that when she came back and tried to get inside the house to rescue her foster animals, she was "coughing and coughing, and could not do it. That is why I have the cough now, because I think it went inside my lungs."

When Granados went back to the home this past Saturday to see if anything was salvageable, the air was still thick with the smell of the burnt debris lost in the fire.

Even one week after the fire, Granados says "you still really couldn't breathe in there."

Chita said she has been collecting donations from people who do not feel comfortable with making a donation online, and she is also willing to accept any donations of clothing or household items at her home. She can be reached by emailing msrod84@gmail.com.

The fact that Granados' children are split up and are not under the same roof is "just horrible," Chita said.

To get them together again and to get them on their feet — because everything is so hard for everyone — would the best thing for the family, according to Chita.

"For them to be together at this time, is easier than separate," she added.

GoFundMe is a Patch promotional partner.