HOLYOKE — Milton Galarza and his wife, who is seven months pregnant with their son, almost didn’t make it out of their fourth-floor apartment alive when a fire ravaged the building on New Year’s morning.

He said his friend Trevor Wadleigh of Easthampton — who perished in the blaze — saved them by waking them up.

“He was all on fire,” Galarza said of his friend, who had been staying with the couple. “We couldn’t leave the bedroom. We just stayed in the window, praying for help.”

Galarza, 28, said fire officials rescued him and his wife using a ladder truck.

“We’re real grateful to be alive,” he said. “I want everyone to know what he did for us.”

Wadleigh, 34, was the third confirmed victim of the fire that destroyed an apartment building at the corner of North East Street and East Dwight Street. The fire also killed two others — Maria Cartagena, 48, and Jorge Munoz, 55 — who lived together on the third floor.

In an event sponsored by the city of Holyoke and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, 49 people displaced by the fire gathered Tuesday at the Holyoke War Memorial to apply for assistance. They registered with the American Red Cross, signed up for long-term housing assistance, received gift cards to grocery stores and connected with mental health professionals.

Rory Casey, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the day’s proceedings were about joining victims with needed services.

“Ultimately, we want to make sure no one slips through the cracks,” he said.

Mayor Alex Morse told those affected by the blaze: “We’ll be here as long as we need to be.”

A GoFundMe page Morse set up raised nearly $43,000 toward the city’s $100,000 goal as of late Tuesday afternoon.

“The most amazing part has really been the community’s response to this,” said Ward 4 City Councilor Jossie Valentin. “It’s just an amazing example of the good social media can do, and just how strong the community of Holyoke is.”

‘Lucky I made it’

As former tenants visited tables set up by the Red Cross, some recounted their own versions of the tragedy that unfolded New Year’s Day.

Carlos Diaz,  31, said he lived next door to Cartagena and Munoz, who perished in the fire. He said they were good people, that they were saving up to move out of the building.

“I heard screaming in the window,” he said, referencing Cartagena’s last moments. “She passed out and that’s how she fell.”

Diaz said he opened his door and went toward the back side of the building, when he heard and felt something explode.

“The flame came to my face,” he said, showing how his hand and ear were burned deflecting the apparent blast. “People tell me I’m lucky I made it.”

He said he’s thankful his son wasn’t in the apartment at the time.

“This is an experience that no one is going to forget,” he said. “The people — jumping from the window — it broke my heart.”

Wilson Lopez, 46, said he heard the fire alarms sound and looked around. When he smelled smoke, he promptly woke his wife and asked that she get their son out of the building.

But instead of joining them outside, he left his second-floor apartment and ran upstairs, where he said he found what he believed to be the source of the blaze.

He said he found a couple trying to rescue their two young daughters from the flames. One of the daughters, who he said was already suffering burns to her feet, was too scared to run past the blaze that was quickly taking over the apartment, he said.

“When I grabbed her, she fainted,” he said. “The heat was bad.”

He said it appeared flames had sprung from a set of cables running up the wall behind a couch. “Within five minutes the fire was all over the apartment.”

Jennifer Mieth, spokeswoman for the state fire marshal’s office, said Tuesday the investigation into the cause of the fire was still active, and she could not comment on Lopez’s assertion.

Once he’d gotten the girls to safety, Lopez said, he helped fetch a mattress to catch those looking to jump from windows. He said they used a blanket to successfully catch a baby, but when the child’s mother jumped she broke her leg.

He said it took a while for fire officials to arrive. Morse said Monday there was a several-minute delay between the time the fire started and the time the department arrived on scene, apparently due to the fact that residents didn’t immediately call for assistance. 

Lopez said he didn’t call for help, simply because he was so focused on getting people out of the building before it was entirely engulfed.

Lopez said he’d only moved into the building about a month ago. Before that he was homeless.

“We just moved the last of our stuff,” he said. “Two days after that we lost everything. But at least we have our lives.”

Emil Morales, a police officer with the Holyoke Police Department, said he won’t soon forget what he calls the most dreadful call he’s responded to in his career.

“It was a horrific scene,” he said. “It’s tough to relive.”

He said people were popping up in windows, with nowhere to go but down. As the fire crept up behind them, he said many readied to jump.

“‘My back is burning,’” he recalled one man yelling from the window ledge. But the ground was too far away for them to jump, Morales said.

So he urged them to stay put, he said, and neighbors helped talk people down and keep them as calm as possible. In this way, he said, eight people were saved from ledges using a ladder truck.

“The entire building came out — out of the building, out of their houses — to help,” he said. “The community was amazing.”

Wilfredo Lopez, 22, was among the eight who — at the behest of Morales — refrained from jumping out his window and made it to safety by the ladder truck.

“I was trying to save my dog, too,” he said in Spanish of his Siberian husky, Nash. “But he didn’t make it.”

Luis Galarza, who lived on the first floor of the building, said he was sleeping when his mother came into his room, telling him there was a fire.

He grabbed his two dogs and his turtle and made for the exit, he said.

“They’re putting us up in a temporary apartment,” he said. “Most of us are applying for further assistance — everybody lost everything, basically.”

Several residents appear to have lost animals in the blaze. Shane Wetnicka, 40, said two of his cats remain missing. He said he attempted to enter the building on Tuesday to see if they were still alive in his girlfriend’s first-floor apartment, but police caught him and turned him away for safety reasons.

“They’re part of our family, so obviously she’s upset about that,” he said of his girlfriend.

Wetnicka, who survived another fire about eight years ago, said the most important thing amid the chaos is to “get everything with a heartbeat out of the house.”

He said that’s exactly what he tried to do when he saw Maria Cartagena in the window. He said he ran back upstairs in a desperate attempt to save her.

“I couldn’t get into the other side, and the smoke was too much,” he said, his voice breaking. “All I did is what I could. I banged and kicked on every door.”

Wetnicka said it’s been a rough couple of days, but at least he and his girlfriend escaped unscathed.

“You can buy more stuff but you can’t replace lives,” he said.

Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.

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