Pensacola, Fl
The Pensacola family is recovering after one disaster last week.
When the Stamitools left their flooded home Wednesday after Hurricane Sally, their immediate instinct was to seek refuge in wife Tricia’s childhood home that still belongs to her mother.
But after a flood and a fire, the whole family had nothing but each other.
The Pensacola couple, their two children and six pets survived Hurricane Sally with the help of the National Guard after seeking shelter in an attic from the floods. Then they moved to Tricia’s mother’s home in Seminole, Alabama – less than 20 miles from their flooded home.
The family is fighting a different calamity.
Son Colby Pyle says, “I couldn’t breathe when I first got here. I saw something you’ve known all your life that burned like this.”
Less than 30 minutes after leaving their home in Seminole on Monday afternoon, the house caught fire, losing their belongings that had been saved by the storm, along with two of their pets, one of the cats and your two-year-old, Bagheera.
“We found her under the living room table, wrapped up, and she went to sleep and never woke up,” said Summer Rosinho, Tricia’s sister. “It’s one thing after another.” She says she feels defeated.
Rosinho has summoned the Channel 3 newsroom from Tampa, seeking to spread the word about her family’s losses.
“I’m just trying to show her that she’s not defeated. It’s just the beginning of something better,” said Rosinho.
Being the only man in the family, Colby says his job is to get them together. He says he’s still in shock, but is thankful that they haven’t lost any more.
He said, “Something happened, you go back to your mother’s house, your mom is there to take care of your family. Now the mom’s house is gone, so there are a lot of things to discover.”
