LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A woman is mourning the loss of her father after a devastating apartment fire in the east valley, a tragedy that also left her and her mother without a home.
The fire broke out late Sunday night into Monday morning near Lamb Boulevard and Vegas Valley Drive. According to fire crews, flames started inside her father’s unit and quickly spread into the attic. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
WATCH | Las Vegas woman mourns father lost in fire, hopes to find those who helped him
When firefighters arrived, they found the apartment heavily engulfed. One person was located outside near the bottom of the stairs suffering from thermal injuries and smoke inhalation.
For Leana Gonzalez, the loss is almost impossible to process.
Her father, Bernardo Gonzalez Rodríguez, had been battling prostate and lung cancer for six years. Just two weeks before the fire, he entered hospice care.
Leana says she had been coming to terms with the idea of losing him, just not like this.
“I was already mentally preparing myself. Never in a million years thought that this would have happened,” she said.
She describes her father as someone who brought light into every room. A man who made people feel safe, made them laugh, and cared deeply for those around him.
“I can’t even begin to describe how much he meant to everybody that he knew.”
Bernardo and his beloved cat, Mittens, did not make it out of the fire.
In a matter of minutes, Leana says everything changed, not just losing her father, but losing the chance to hold onto the memories inside his home.
“I was already dreading going through his things, and now there’s just nothing left,” she said.
The apartment is now unlivable, and Leana and her mother are facing the reality of starting over with nothing.
“I don’t even know how to process it,” she said.
She recalls the scene that night as overwhelming, something she says didn’t feel real.
“The scene was not even something you would see in a movie, just unbelievable.”
But in the middle of the chaos, she says two men risked their lives to help.
According to Leana, the men crawled into the burning apartment, pulled her father out, and helped carry her mother down the stairs to safety, before disappearing.
“They just disappeared,” she said.
Now, as she navigates the grief and uncertainty ahead, Leana says finding those two men is something she can’t stop thinking about. She hopes to thank them for what they did during her family’s darkest moment.
A GoFundMe has been created to help Leana and her mother find housing and begin rebuilding their lives. Anyone with information about the two men who helped during the fire is asked to reach out.
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