Community Rallies Around First Responders Who Lost Home to Fire on New Year’s Day

A South Carolina family says they are being forced to start over after they lost their home with all their personal belongings inside to a fire on New Year’s Day.

Mary Moss and Cody Heithold are both first responders who work in Laurens County. Moss said she first began smelling smoke early Friday morning before the house burst into flames several hours later, WHNS reported.

Moss works in the Animal Control division of the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office, and Heithold works as a police officer in the city of Clinton.

No one was injured in the fire that destroyed their home, but the family is starting from the bottom after losing all of their possessions.

But thanks to the community, the process of rebuilding will go just a little bit faster.

A GoFundMe page started by someone with the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office raised more than $7,000 as of Monday afternoon. A firefighter in Clinton is also letting the family live in a vacant home that he owns until the family can get back on their feet.

“It’s so surprising to see how quickly everybody came together to make sure that we were going to be okay and to quickly get back onto our feet,” said Moss.

Moss says she believes the fire started in her bedroom, adding that the family does not plan on rebuilding where they lived. They instead want to move on and find somewhere else to start over.

Moss and Heithold are not the only ones who lost their home to a fire over the holidays and had the support of the community behind them. A New Jersey community rallied behind the family of an Army veteran who lost their home and two dogs in a fire on Christmas Eve.