School district, community come together to help families displaced in fire

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Victims who escaped a burning Marietta apartment building finally got back into their units Friday afternoon.

Management at the Magnolia at Whitlock apartments locked them out after the fire Wednesday night.

“They changed the locks. We’re not allowed back in,” one renter said.

After a wait of 40 hours, some were ready to break down the door.

“I had a sledgehammer,” Joey Renta said. "I was ready to go in the door this morning.”

The manager on-site said she was only following procedures and the tenants were let in after signing a liability waiver from the property owner. Most of the more than 30 people displaced, including almost a dozen children, lost everything to smoke and water damage.

TRENDING STORIES:

• Equifax apologizes for sending people to fake company website
• Prize-winning show horse found shot to death
• DeKalb County schools to add extra time to school days due to Irma

At least six of the children are students in the Marietta City School District and the district and community immediately jumped in to help. Word of the fire spread through social media and in the schools.

Within hours, the schools collected clothing, food, money and gift cards to help the students from kindergarten through seniors in high school.

“I’m so glad to be part of this community because if we lived someplace else, we probably wouldn’t have got this support,” said mother of four, Tiffany Lewis.

Another mother to three students in Marietta schools, Samara Branch, said keeping a stable environment around her 17-, 14-, and 11-year-old kids is important at such an unstable time.

“Just seeing them really not affected, knowing we have so many people backing us, it’s really amazing," she said.

Some of the families are staying in hotels through the weekend, but members of the community offered their homes all next week for the families to stay while out of town during the district’s fall break.

Cox Media Group