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November 16, 2006 -- Surviving a Fire and a Survivor's Guilt By Emily Vasquez
 Carlos Casanova was not breathing when a firefighter pulled him from his family's burning third-floor apartment in the Bronx.
He was pronounced dead at the scene, and his body was covered with a blanket. But moments later a neighbor standing nearby saw the blanket move and yelled to firefighters that Mr. Casanova might still be alive. Nearly three weeks later he regained consciousness at Jacobi Medical Center, but he could not remember the fire. He learned that his mother, Brenda Casanova, 41, and his oldest sister, Maria Cruz, 20, had died, and soon he felt a terrible guilt because he had survived. Mr. Casanova, 17 at the time of the fire on Dec. 30, 2003, struggled with depression, became homeless and drifted. But nearly three years later, he can talk matter-of-factly about his struggle to cope with his loss. "Losing your mother and your sister while you're sleeping, it takes a while for that cut to heal," he said. "What I'm trying to find out now is the purpose of why I was given a second chance." In describing the blaze, he draws on the few details he gathered from neighbors and other witnesses. "The fire started instantly," he said. "It was as if my house was a matchbook." He explained that his mother was the first to make it outside, but she went back to wake up the rest of the family. Someone helped his sister Itzel, 19, escape. Mr. Casanova was asleep on a fold-out couch in the living room. Someone later told him that he tried to break a window to climb out. He said he does not remember the face of the firefighter who carried him outside. In the hospital he recovered from smoke inhalation and third-degree burns. At first he was weak, he said. He could not feel his legs, and he did not recognize the friends and family members who came to visit. In the hallway outside his hospital room, he had to learn anew how to walk — and in time his memory returned, except of the fire. Two and a half months later, he left the hospital and went to live with his father for the first time since his parents separated when he was 6. But he was overwhelmed by the loss of his mother and sister. While attending school before the fire he had occasionally worked at a car wash, but after the fire he found that he no longer had any motivation for school or for working. "I didn't care about anything," he said. "I didn't want to talk to nobody." Soon his father told him he had to go to school, work or leave. "I did not blame him," Mr. Casanova said. "He had every right." For several months he lived with friends, depending on their families for support. But in time his welcome in their homes also wore out, and he began sleeping in a Bronx park. The weeks he spent living in the park seem to be the only topic he is unwilling to discuss. He says only that he "went through everything there." One day, a police officer approached him in the park and suggested that he go to a shelter. More than a week passed before he did so, early one August morning last year. A caseworker referred him to the crisis center at Covenant House on West 41st Street in Manhattan, an affiliate of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Later, Mr. Casanova joined Covenant House's Rights of Passage program, which helps older teenagers become self-sufficient through employment and education while they live at the program's 17th Street residence in Manhattan. The program requires participants to have jobs and, Mr. Casanova, now 20, works five days a week at a day care and boarding center for dogs. Hit hard with the reality during his job search that many employers would not consider him without a high school diploma, he is studying for a G.E.D. exam next month. He writes poetry, a habit he developed in middle school. "It helps me get out the words that are in my head," he said. "Otherwise, my mind would be a total mess." He got a tattoo on his left arm with the names of his mother and oldest sister sketched across a tombstone — all he can afford right now, he said, to memorialize them. Their graves, he said, have no tombstones and are marked only with numbers. In September, with the help of $400 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, he made a deposit on his first apartment. It is a one-bedroom near the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, just blocks from his father's home. Mr. Casanova said he already knows how his father will react to news of the move. "He'll be proud of me," he said. "But he'll say, 'Don't stop there, keep going.' "
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