A Cramped Christmas for the Fire-Displaced

Had it been any other Christmas Eve, Rosa Gomez and her family would have opened presents at midnight and begun dancing when they woke up the next morning.

This year, there was no money for presents and no room to celebrate.

Gomez, one of the 500 residents of a Santa Ana apartment complex displaced by two Dec. 2 fires, still doesn’t have a new place to live. She is temporarily sharing a two-bedroom apartment with 15 other people.

“I lost everything. We have nothing. It’s Christmas and it hurts,” said Gomez, 35, whose one-bedroom Lyon Street apartment was destroyed.

To save space, Gomez’s husband lives with relatives nearby while she and their children -- ages 11, 9 and 10 months -- stay at her mother’s cramped apartment in an undamaged part of the complex.

Friends from her son’s karate class gave her children toy cars, blankets, dolls and crayons. On Christmas Eve, Gomez, her sister and mother cooked about 100 tamales, but their holiday festivities ended there and they went to bed early because they had no gifts to exchange.

On Christmas Day, gloom enveloped the apartment, particularly because the children could not play outside in the rain.

“You get donations and gifts, but they don’t relieve the sadness,” said Gomez’s mother, Nina Mojica, 61.

The five-alarm fires at La Serena Apartments began while Gomez was at her $11-an-hour job at a curtain factory. She had come to the United States from Michoacan in 1986, and everything she has purchased since then was inside that one-bedroom unit, for which she rented for $950 a month. But she has not been able to retrieve what possessions might have survived the flames, smoke and water, because the apartment owner has not allowed access. Sixty-eight units in two buildings were burned in separate blazes.

Gomez’s oldest child, Jorge, came home from school during the fires and feared he had lost his family. He has not been the same since, Gomez said. He doesn’t want to eat and is alternately withdrawn and aggressive, she said.

Gomez began taking an anti-depressant to control her constant crying.

Her sister, Maria Mojica, and her family were also displaced. She, her husband and their two children are also living with Gomez until they move to a Westminster apartment next month.

“Every night, it looks like a campground here,” said Nina Mojica.”There just isn’t enough room.”

Nor peace and quiet. Gomez’s baby, Eric, has been sick, and his crying keeps others awake at night. The other children have also gotten sick.

Before her daughters and grandchildren moved in to her apartment, Nina Mojica had lived in the living room with a third daughter and rented out the two bedrooms for $450 a month each, to help cover the $1,340 monthly rent.

Now, eight people sleep on the living room floor each night, while the six regular tenants remain in the bedrooms. Donations to Gomez and her sister -- mostly clothing -- have been stored on the outside terrace, where they got soaked Thursday.

Gomez will move into her own $1,070-a-month, two-bedroom apartment. “I know we are lucky to have survived. I try to remember that. I’m doing better every day and I’m not crying as much now,” Gomez said.

The Red Cross has helped by paying the first month’s rent for the new apartment.

Gomez says it is now her turn to give: She has signed up for a class to learn to be a Red Cross volunteer in 2004.

At the next emergency, she hopes to be the one who hands out food and hope.