Community, schools and Red Cross respond to support family after deadly blaze

SOUTH BEND — Less than three months ago, at the end of October, Elijah Luciano shared an urgent plea on Facebook to help a single father who had just moved into a nearby home at 222 N. LaPorte Ave., on South Bend’s near west side.

The man had come from Iowa and needed all the household essentials he could get for his six kids in the home, Luciano told The Tribune on Tuesday. Luciano helped to fill the family’s kitchen with food and the bathrooms with toiletries. A self-employed contractor, he paid the man to work for him now and again.

After a fire at the house on Sunday killed five children and sent one, 11-year-old Angel Smith, to a pediatric burn unit in Indianapolis, it was Luciano who stood in the morgue with the father, David Smith, as he identified the corpses of his five kids. Smith had asked Luciano, an ordained pastor, to come pray over the children.

Emergency care: South Bend fatal fire survivor in 'critical condition' at Riley Children's hospital

“No one needs to be alone while doing one of the hardest things they’ll ever have to do in their lives,” Luciano said.

The children who died in the blaze, two girls and three boys, were all 10 years old or younger. The oldest, 11-year-old Angel, was in critical condition at Riley Children’s Health as of Tuesday afternoon.

The South Bend Fire Department named the five victims Wednesday morning. They are 10-year-old Demetis Smith, 9-year-old Davida Smith, 5-year-old Deontay Smith, 4-year-old D'Angelo Smith and 17-month-old Faith Smith.

“Our kids would play together outside on a trampoline and play together in the yard,” Luciano said. “In the last three months, we’d gotten close to the family. This is a tragedy.”

Now Luciano, a 38-year-old father of four who said he leads a ministry to support single men with children, has started a GoFundMe on David Smith’s behalf. Smith, who Luciano said is 67, needs a new vehicle, new clothes, a new phone and more. "Everything that he had got ripped away from him," Luciano said.

He’d like to raise enough money to pay for Smith to rent a place for him and Angel for the foreseeable future. Right now, Smith is living with an older daughter in South Bend, according to Luciano. The fund had raised more than $6,000 of its $30,000 goal by Tuesday afternoon.

"I want to prepare as if (Angel's) coming home, and I want her to have a home when she comes home,” Luciano said. “I want to be able to pay his rent for the next six months to a year so he doesn't have to worry about anything other than taking care of Angel."

Separately, local community leaders and organizations are also promoting and seeking donations for a fund to support whatever the family needs to recover. Donations to the “Smith Family Memorial Fund” can be made at any First Source Bank.

Lynn Coleman, who is leading that effort, said he learned about the GoFundMe campaign Tuesday, after the fund was established. He said the two efforts can complement each other.

Coleman, a former South Bend mayor’s assistant and retired police officer, said local leaders wanted to offer a centralized way for the community to support the family. Among them, Sweet Home Ministries in South Bend had begun some efforts of its own, too, he said.

“I cannot imagine what Mr. Smith is going through,” Coleman said, acknowledging that he doesn’t know the father. “How do you wake up in the morning and deal with that?”

School officials respond to tragic South Bend house fire

These efforts are among several cropping up in response to the fire that claimed the five children’s lives this week. Organizations are helping not only surviving family members but the greater community that will live with the trauma.

The South Bend Community School Corp. said it is bringing extra mental health support to the buildings where three of the children had attended school. Two of those children died.

Schools social worker Monica Rohm, who is coordinating the effort, said the two children who died were third- and fifth-graders at Madison STEAM Academy. The surviving daughter is a sixth grader at Navarre Middle School.

She said the schools use a crisis plan whenever there’s a tragedy at one of the schools, bringing extra social workers in the morning after a loss. The social workers are also licensed mental health professionals, and they often bring in additional support from local community partners to assist families and staff.

“On Monday … we spoke in classrooms, delivered the tragic news, offered guidance to teachers and provided a lot of hugs to staff and students," Rohm said. “We offered individual and group support to the students, spoke at the staff meeting and provided resources for families and staff going forward.

"We also sat with students who didn't have the words to put together how they were feeling," she added, "but we could tell they were struggling through tears and behavior. It is exhausting work but very rewarding at the same time as we see how much comfort we bring in this time of need.”

Red Cross, South Bend Fire Department offer free fire alarms

In addition, the American Red Cross typically offers assistance to the surviving family members in the immediate days or weeks after a fire. Kristin Marlow, executive director of the Red Cross in northwest Indiana, said the idea is to fill essential needs while connecting them with the community resources for their long-term recovery.

So far for this family, with one badly injured child in an Indianapolis hospital, Marlow said, “We don’t know what that looks like yet.”

Depending on what the family’s needs actually are, the Red Cross could provide a motel room for a matter of days while quickly referring them to housing possibilities, like apartments. The agency can also help with food, limited financial assistance and replacement medical goods like medications and eyeglasses. It may work with local partners who provide that, too. And it may find that the family is securing help elsewhere.

The Red Cross has a team of disaster specialists who can ensure that needs are being met for the family’s spiritual care, health care (a registered nurse) and mental health. Ultimately, they’d transition the family to local services for needs going into the future.

The Red Cross could also help with burials and reuniting family members for funeral services.

But the agency also has its eye on the wider community.

The Red Cross is working with the South Bend Fire Department to offer and install free smoke alarms, along with fire safety education and evacuation planning, to neighbors who need them — not just for safety, Marlow said, but for “hope and healing” as the general community deals with the trauma, too.

With smoke alarms, she said, neighbors “feel empowered,” especially if they have children at home, too.

“It gives them something positive to focus on, so they can say, ‘I’m not powerless,’” Marlow said. The tragedy "is going to weigh heavily on everyone. They are going to drive by that house and feel devastated.”

Anyone who needs a smoke alarm can call the Red Cross and its Home Fire Campaign at 888-684-1441.

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Red Cross community respond to help Smith family after deadly fire