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Franco Gomez made it home to his family by dinnertime on a misty Friday in late January. Another week of working as a carpet installer, earning $130 a day, had drawn to a close.
To escape a chill that had seeped crept into their Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse, Gomez and his wife, Carolina, cuddled in a queen-size bed with their two children in a second-floor bedroom, the warmest space in the house. The family started to watch a Netflix movie, The Princess Switch.
Moments later, a thunderous explosion rattled their walls and shattered their windows, and their roof was cleaved open by something large and metallic: an 800-pound jet engine.
A smoldering piece of the roof crumbled, and struck 4-year-old Rayan on the back of his neck. Gomez darted out of the room, cradling his boy in his arms, then tripped and tumbled down the stairs to the first floor.
Gomez — with his wife and their daughter, Valentina, at his heels — grabbed for the front door. It didn’t budge.
A neighbor managed to break open the front door, and the Gomezes rushed across the street. They watched helplessly as plumes of dark smoke rose from their home. Flames devoured all of their belongings, including a mermaid-shaped piggy bank that held $15,000 — the family’s only savings, a decade’s worth.
On Calvert Street, near Cottman Avenue, Philadelphia firefighters respond to plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia on Jan. 31. Franco Gomez recorded a cellphone video as the family’s home went up in flames and his wife sobbed in the background.
A Learjet medical transport had just crashed on nearby Cottman Avenue, leaving seven people dead and at least two dozen injured, plunging the neighborhood into chaos.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker‘s administration has spent much of the last 40 days trying to assess the extent of the damage — physical, material, and emotional — that homeowners and business owners have suffered in the wake of the Jan. 31 plane crash.
But the city’s efforts to help those affected were slow to reach the Spanish-speaking Gomezes, who struggled to find and pay for a new place to live, while encountering language barriers along the way.
They escaped the fire with just the clothes they were wearing, and were grateful to have suffered only minor cuts and bruises. Carolina Gomez has started a new nightly ritual: rewashing the few clothes that each family member has.
“Our house is burning, Mami!” 9-year-old Valentina cried.
The Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections has visited 366 properties near the crash site. Inspectors have determined that 14 homes were unsafe, due to fractured facades, loose bricks, and roofs that firefighters cut open for ventilation to help contain flames.
Two other properties were labeled imminently dangerous, including the Gomezes’ home; inspection records show that the building’s interior walls and joists were all damaged, and that the roof collapsed.
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