JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Mandarin woman is coming to terms with her new reality after she says she lost everything in the fire at the Mandarin Lakes Apartments Thursday morning.
Kelsie Lisner met with Action News Jax at the complex to speak about what happened. She says it was the first time she’s returned since the fire.
She says her boyfriend left their apartment just 45 minutes before she started hearing yelling outside her unit around 8 a.m.
“I’m thinking, ‘Maybe it’s a domestic dispute,’ and so I kind of went back to what I was doing,” Lisner said. “Then I heard running and yelling.”
Just as she began to give the commotion a second thought, the yelling got louder.
“There was pounding on my door,” Lisner said. “’Fire, get out! Fire!”
She says when she ripped her door open, she saw people running up and down the stairs.
Lisner said she rushed to grab her dog, but unfortunately had to leave her cat, Bennie, behind after she said he clawed up her stomach and ran away after she attempted to put him in a crate.
When she got downstairs, she was met with the view of heavy flames tearing through the second and third floors.
“The only real thing that was going through my head was my cat,” Lisner said.
Luckily, she says Jacksonville Fire and Rescue was able to rescue him, and he was checked out by paramedics, who told her he was okay. She says everything else, however, was a ‘total loss.’
“I’m in complete shock,” Lisner said.
Lisner is one of eleven people displaced by the fire. JFRD says it impacted 12 units, nine of which people called home.
Lisner’s close friends and coworkers at Picasso’s created a GoFundMe on her behalf to help her as she navigates her next steps, but she says she’s hoping the funds will be enough to give back to the others who were displaced.
“Those aren’t just my coworkers — these are my best friends; [they] are family,” Lisner said. “They have reached out [and] have asked me if they could give me gift cards to give to the front office so they could give it to the families.”
“So, they have been not only helpful for me and my boyfriend, they’ve been helpful to the other families that they don’t even know.”
JFRD says the State Fire Marshal is still investigating the cause of the fire.
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