Family finds new home, new furnace after Zelie fire
In fall 2022, the Martinez family packed all their belongings from their Florida home to settle in a Zelienople townhouse — only to lose it all a few months later.
“In January, our house caught on fire,” Tina Martinez said. “We lost everything there, pretty much.”
With only the clothes on their backs, the Martinez family has made a new home in Cranberry Township — with the “overwhelming” support of the county community.
“It is overwhelming,” said Brandon Martinez, Tina’s husband. “We’re just grateful for it. There’s a lot of people helping and pouring out love.”
A few of those people met the family Wednesday, Oct. 11, to donate and install a new furnace as part of Lennox’s “Feel the Love” program — a national initiative to support families experiencing hardship.
“We team up with our contractors, like White Heating, and they provide the donation of their time, their labor and supplies while we’re giving the furnace to the owner,” said Joe Zylinski, territory manager for Lennox’s Pittsburgh area.
Sponsored by supplier White Heating in Ross Township, Allegheny County, the Martinez family was nominated for the program by Tina’s aunt, Jen Augustine, after their new home’s furnace needed an estimated $4,800 replacement.
“When we moved in, we unfortunately needed a new AC and then eventually a new furnace,” Tina said. “Luckily enough, this kind of all happened and here we are.”
Crews from Lennox’s Pittsburgh division and White Heating arrived at 8:30 a.m., setting a table of doughnuts and coffee for the family before setting themselves to work replacing the old furnace.
Gary Gressang, owner of White Heating, said he only learned of the Martinez family’s story after previously installing a new air conditioning unit for them.
“I mean, we just felt horrible,” Gressang said.
After receiving the family’s nomination from Augustine, Gressang selected them as one of two families in the region for Lennox’s “Feel the Love” event.
Chris Vicari, field technician for Lennox, said the Martinez’s story resonated with the program’s goal of assisting families in “dire” situations ahead of the winter months.
“The complete loss is, to me, hard to imagine. How do you come back from that?” Vicari said. “And to start over and have these little things fail — having the furnace fail, the air conditioner fail — and having to have support to pay for it, to me it’s just the direness of the situation.”
Zlyinski agreed.
“That’s the purpose of this program: to help people in need with a furnace that will keep them warm in the winter months,” he said.
Since the loss of their townhouse in January, Brandon and Tina said they were just “grateful” everything happened as it did.
“It’s been a crazy year,” Tina said. “Honestly, at the end of the day, it could have been totally different after the fire, and we’re just thankful that it wasn’t.”
On the night of Thursday, Jan. 19, Tina said she was awaked by a “ticking” sound against the window.
“I looked out and it was kind of orange-ish, and I thought, ‘That’s weird for January,’” she said, laughing. “I didn’t have my contacts in or my glasses on.”
She said she went to check the kitchen, but could not find anything out of the ordinary.
“And I looked out the kitchen window and our entire SUV was just engulfed in flames,” she said.
With only their pajamas, Brandon, Tina, their three children — Mila, 8; Bryce, 5; and Remi, 2 — and their two dogs escaped the home unscathed.
Brandon then knocked on their neighbor’s doors to help them evacuate.
“Thank God everyone was safe and there were no injuries or anything like that,” Tina said. “That was kind of the whole 20 minutes that felt like an eternity.”
With half of the townhouse destroyed, the family was left with only a few “sentimental” items and a handful of miscellaneous things — like their daughter’s Lego sets, assembled into a little village Wednesday across from the new furnace.
“We count our blessings. We have our family,” Brandon said. “But when our kids are like, ‘Oh, I used to have that teddy bear,’ for them, things are pretty different.”
But the couple agreed the children and the family have seen incredible support from the community the months following the tragedy.
Mila and Bryce’s schools not only provided emotional support for the children, but helped facilitate bags and bags of donations for the family.
“There’s just been a ton of help,” Brandon said. “I mean, we had probably the whole basement covered with bags of clothes and things. We’ve really, throughout the entire process, been super blessed by this community.”
At one point, Tina said, the family had to ask the community to stop donating supplies.
“As much as we were donated, we probably donated half of it to other people — just things we knew we weren’t going to use or had extra of,” she said. “So that was nice, to be able to turn around and give it to other people that needed it.”
In spite of everything, the couple agreed they were thankful to have made a home in such a supportive area.
“It just makes us that much more grateful to be in this area where people are just so willing and bent over backward to make sure we had anything and everything we need,” Tina said.
