An Arlington County, Virginia, firefighter is thanking the community for the support his family has seen since a fire destroyed their home in Montgomery County on Friday.
Arlington County Fire Capt. David Zuniga lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and his department set up a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign, which has raised more than $42,000 for the family.
“I was very grateful, thankful, because if anything, it takes a huge load off my shoulders,” said Zuniga said about the donations.
Zuniga recalled his daughter woke him up early that day, after she noticed fire coming from their neighbors’ house and came to notify him.
“I remember running downstairs trying to get a shirt on, and I wanted to go assess the damage,” Zuniga said. “I would have never expected the kind of fire load we were confronted with.”
The fire was intense. Home surveillance footage shows his wife going down the stairs as smoke followed from the upper level of the home.
Zuniga’s family, including their son who has special needs, got out of the home in time. As his daughter called 911, Zuniga said he tried to buy the family and his neighbors some time by using a garden hose to wet down the siding of their homes.
Once his family was out, he can be seen on security camera footage banging on their neighbor’s door, telling them to get “the babies out.”
Zuniga said he was worried because the fire was already in his daughter’s room and only a wall separated her room from his neighbor’s children’s room. He thought he might need to break into the home to get to them, but finally saw movement through the door.
“They finally came to the door, and they started evacuating,” he said. “So, I never had to step into the house.”
Zuniga said once Montgomery County firefighters arrived, they put the fire out “in record time.”
‘It changed everything’
Unfortunately, Zuniga said the fire destroyed most of what the family owned, including priceless memories, among them their children’s drawings, photographs and keepsakes from his daughter’s quinceañera.
Zuniga’s son has autism and special items that are a part of his daily routine were also lost in the fire, making things difficult on him.
For the firefighter, going through this fire has been was tough.
“I’ve never been afraid of a fire. That’s a normal part of doing business,” Zuniga said. “But when my family’s lives were at stake, it changed everything. I thought I was gonna lose them that day. So I was scared. I was very nervous,”
The donations the family has received will go a long way to getting them back on their feet, as they search for another place to live.
“It means that I get to get another opportunity to restart,” Zuniga said. “It means that we can get our kids clothes, shoes, get their toiletries, get their needs for school. Like my kid first day of school, he didn’t have a backpack, didn’t have a lunch bag, didn’t have his water bottle.”
He’s also thinking of his neighbors, who were also impacted by the fire.
“A lot of people have contacted me, but a lot of families got displaced, and a lot of families lost all their belongings, their whole livelihood was in these homes, and they’ve lost it,” he said.
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