Residents of the Circa Verus Apartments at Frisco are still recovering from a fire that erupted on the north side of the complex in the early morning hours of Feb. 17. The fire allegedly started on the first floor from what seemed to be an open flame but progressed up to the fourth floor with residents evacuated.

“The fire was continuing for about 12 hours, and then we thought the fire was down, and kind of done,” apartment complex coordinator George Sun said. “Then, later in the day about 18 hours later, the fire reignited, and continued for about a total of 36 hours. So approximately, somewhere between 30-40 apartments  got damaged, and everyone’s been displaced from that building, 200+ families.”

Many families were without basic supplies but through social media, people grew aware of the situation and many items were donated for the affected families.

“So in the 48 hours, we had literally over 300 donations that were given, basically, and it was overwhelming, I mean it was actually shocking how much stuff we were getting across the board,” Sun said. “We put out a call, basically on Friday to ask for volunteers to come, so last Saturday, we had almost 30 volunteers, and in the span of about 3 hours, we were able to sort, oh gosh, literally hundreds of different items, into different categories, which was you know fantastic sort of a help.”

Salmia Jampuri, a 10th grader at Lebanon Trail High School, was one of the volunteers.

“I found out [about volunteering] through a couple of family friends,” Jampuri said. “[They weren’t affected], but they did hear about the fire in like the news and stuff, and they looked for volunteering opportunities, and they saw it here. I first came here 2 weeks ago, and then I just kept coming after that because we had school off, so whenever it was open.”

The support from the community and donations for the families was a greater amount than expected.

“We’re calling today, in terms of the work, “Spread the love”, to take our excess donations, and sending them out to the local donations, within the city, maybe the county,” Sun said. “The overall process was amazing.”