There are so many situations in life that you just can’t prepare for. Sure, you can pack a survival kit and keep it in the back of your closet in case of emergencies, and people are always doing different sorts of drills in hopes of preparing themselves for disaster — tornado drills, earthquake drills, fire drills. But you can never really know what’d you do in an intense situation until you’re in the thick of it.
When it came to survival, the Gomez-Muniz family were old pros. They’d faced disaster before and survived, but none of them ever expected disaster to strike again. But it did, and this event came in the form of an unsettling smell that woke up the youngest member of the family.
In the early morning hours of December 19th, the Gomez-Muniz family were peacefully sleeping in their beds. It had been a while since any of them had sweet dreams, and though they didn’t know it then, they were about to wake up to another nightmare.
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Bad news had become the norm for Daniel, Frankie, and their two daughters, Lyric and Berlin. In 2017, their home was destroyed by the devastating San Jose flood. They were told to rebuild their lives, and all they could do was try to get by.
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Daniel Muniz worked odd jobs and seasonally at UPS, while Frankie was a receptionist. Still, their modest income simply couldn’t cover the rent, and before long they were faced with an unbelievable possibility.
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There was a chance they’d end up on the street. Luckily, staying positive and making the most out of a bad situation was the family’s strength. So when Daniel’s mother, Leslie, started to have health problems, they saw it as a blessing in disguise.
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The family moved into Leslie’s home. That way, they thought, they had a roof over their heads and could care for Leslie. Best of all, they would still be together as a family. They thought things were finally starting to look up…
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Until Berlin woke up that day in December. That morning had started like any other: An early riser, she had rolled out of bed with the intent of — what else? — searching the home for the family’s Elf on a Shelf. That’s when she smelled it.
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She wasn’t sure if she could believe it at first. After all, if you smelled smoke with no discernible source in sight, would you believe it? Berlin figured she was smelling something from outside the house and went back into her room.
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But she wasn’t in her room long when she had another realization: The room was hot…unseasonably hot. With that, she turned around, looked at her closed bedroom door…and saw black smoke quickly seeping in underneath.
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The sight reminded her of one thing: a fire safety lesson she’d seen on the news. In that moment, there were things Berlin couldn’t be sure of — the dependability of the smoke detectors, for example — but there was one fact she did know.
Black smoke meant flames. That’s all Berlin needed to spring to action. She woke up her older sister, Lyric, with a specific set of instructions. “I told her to get out of the house and sprint to the back door,” Berlin said, “and don’t grab anything.”
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But there were four other people in the home — her parents, Aunt, and grandmother — who needed to be woken up. The only problem was, Berlin had no idea just how much the blaze had spread. She only had one option.
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She ran back into the hallway where she watched in horror as her living room filled with flames. That’s when she started to desperately bang on the walls. “The house is on fire!” she screamed, hoping to wake up her family.
“My throat was hurting so much after it, but I had to scream out my dad’s name,” Berlin said. “I was just screaming ‘Daddy! Daddy!’” Thankfully, Berlin didn’t have to stay inside the smoke and flame-filled house for long.
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“My dad opened the door right away,” Berlin said, and it wasn’t long before he got the rest of the family out of the house. By then, the flames had engulfed almost the entire home…which is when the family realized they were missing someone.
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Their cat, Munchkin, was still somewhere in the home. Daniel immediately ran back into the house in search of the cat, but it was too late: The home was fully ablaze, and all Daniel could do was run out empty-handed.
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“I was still trying to get a hose with my next-door neighbor,” Daniel explained, “[But] the tiny hose would not do anything. That fire, it was fierce.” It was so fierce that by the time the fire department arrived, the black smoke was billowing up from the roof.
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All they could do was watch as the fire department doused the fire, leaving behind the charred remains of what was once their home. For the second time in their lives, the family tried to salvage what little was left behind…
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The Christmas presents turned to ash, along with the rest of the home. What they recovered was scant: Daniel’s lucky sneakers, a robe, and the girls’ asthma medications. Still, as the family looked on at the wreckage, they couldn’t help but wonder one thing.
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What if Berlin hadn’t woken up so early? With this thought in mind, the family did something that no one expected: They counted their blessings. “I’m very proud of her,” Lyric said of her sister’s quick-thinking. “She saved all of us.”
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“I don’t think we would’ve made it out, if Berlin had not woken everybody up,” said Leslie. “She’s our 11-year-old hero.” Their community agreed, and days later, $200 was collected for the family, along with clothes from neighbors and help from the Red Cross.
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Even after losing everything, the Gomez Muniz family were just thankful to be together. They had no clue then that over $30,000 would be raised for them through GoFundMe; all they knew was that they once again had to rebuild…
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And that they had come so close to losing even more than their home. “My blessings are all with me right now,” Daniel said of his wife and daughters. “There’s four of us, and that’s the most important.”
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