SILVER SPRING, Md. — A community has come together to help the victims of a high-rise fire in Silver Spring that left one woman dead and hundreds displaced.
Making Home Possible says 100% of the donated money given through the fundraiser will go to the families impacted by the fire. The digital fundraiser says the monetary donation to the Silver Spring High-Rise Fire Fund is tax-deductible.
Making Home Possible is a nonprofit organization in Montgomery County that aims to help house people, empower families and strengthen neighborhoods, according to the MHP website.
Click here to donate to the Making Home Possible digital fundraiser.
The Red Cross of the National Capital & Greater Chesapeake Region is helping around 5 0families who were impacted by the fire.
There is still no word on what started a fire at the 15-story apartment building in downtown Silver Spring earlier on Feb. 18. The blaze started around 6 a.m. inside a seventh-floor unit at the Arrive Silver Spring apartments.
Nineteen people were injured and a woman, identified by family as 25-year-old Melanie Diaz, was killed. Montgomery County Fire and Rescue say three pets also died on the scene.
Maryland State Fire Marshal Brian Geraci claims the fire could have been prevented if the units had been equipped with a sprinkler system.
"We would not have had any of the deaths, we would not have had any of the injuries and had all of these folks displaced from their units," said Geraci to WUSA9.
One resident is being hailed as a hero for jumping in to help other people get to safety. Joe Tresh went to the hallway and directed his neighbors to a fire extinguisher before turning to go back in to alert his partner that they had to go. Unable to find an alarm in the dense smoke, Tresh and his partner got to the stairwell and ran down one level. No alarm was ringing yet.
That’s where Tresh found an alarm on the sixth floor and pulled it.
“He is a hero,” marveled seventh-floor neighbor Gianna Gronowski. “Without him, we probably would’ve slept through the fire until it was too late. We didn’t know him before this, but he saved our lives.”