Collier County family on Disney vacation returns to find home lost to fire

Lindsey Rotondo was at the happiest place on Earth, celebrating her seventh wedding anniversary, when she learned that the life she had built for more than two years had been snuffed out.

Rotondo, her husband, Tony, 35, and their 4-year-old son Antonio III had just finished their dinner at a restaurant at Disney’s Magic Kingdom on Friday evening when they received the news that an angry brush fire that raged through Golden Gate Estates had reduced their home to a pile of rubble.

“It’s just so final,” Lindsey Rotondo, 30, said Monday, her eyes welling up as she glanced at what little was left of the quaint house on Kearney Avenue.

Related: Families get to work rebuilding lives after Golden Gate Estates fire

“All I care about is that we’re OK, we’re all OK. My grandparents are OK. All of our animals are OK. But you know, it’s the life that you built with the people you love.”

Just hours before the insatiable inferno tore through the home Friday afternoon, it seemed like the family’s residence — which shares a 5-acre lot with two other homes, one belonging to Lindsey Rotondo’s older sister Danielle Krawczeski and the other to her parents — was in the clear.

There was some smoke in the air and ashes outside when the family left for Orlando early Friday morning for what was supposed to be a four-day trip, but mandatory evacuations had been lifted and residents had been cleared to go home.

“So we were, like, pumped that we could feel good about going,” Lindsey Rotondo recalled.

Then the winds picked up. The fire grew. And all of a sudden Lindsey Rotondo’s mother, Tamie Krawczeski, who had joined her daughter at the theme park, received a phone call from her mother-in-law who had stayed behind at Krawczeskis' home on Kearney Avenue.

“We were literally walking through the gates of the most magical place in the world — Magic Kingdom — and my phone rings, and it’s Grandma,” said Krawczeski, 56. “And she says, ‘Tamie, do you have a minute?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ She said, ‘Well honey, they said that there’s a mandatory evacuation, and I think it’s us.’”

A few frenzied phone calls later, Krawczeski confirmed that their homes were suddenly in an evacuation zone. They scrambled to call their pastor and friend Michael Bannon to ask him to pick up Krawczeski’s in-laws at the Kearney Avenue home and drive them to safety.

“And while everyone else was driving out, Michael drove in and got Grandma and Grandpa,” Krawczeski said.

Krawczeski’s husband, Kevin, 56, meanwhile, was at a speaking engagement two hours from their home. He hopped in his car and raced back to Kearney Avenue.

Kevin Krawczeski grabbed his daughter’s two cats, Dragon and Daisy, her Jack Russell, Gizzy, and her laptop, turned on the sprinkler unit as a last line of defense and fled as the fire began to close in on the home.

“He was putting the cats into the car and the firetrucks were rolling in,” Tamie Krawczeski said. “He did not see fire here, but it was so smoky he said you could hardly see to get out.”

Firefighters fought tooth and nail to keep the flames at bay. They were able to save Tamie Krawczeski’s and Danielle Krawczeski’s homes.

But they couldn’t salvage Lindsey and Tony Rotondo’s home, which sits farthest away from the road on the south side of the property. The flames feasted on the home, turning its ivory walls pink and black and folding them like paper.

Few artifacts remained Monday morning when Lindsey Rotondo first surveyed the damage.

There was the skeleton of her husband’s Harley-Davidson that defiantly stood in a sea of gray ash and wilted memories. There were the two half-melted, rainbow-colored pinwheels that stared at the browned gas grill in the yard. And the skinny Direct TV satellite dish that looked up at the clear sky.

“There’s nothing, there’s nothing to salvage,” Lindsey Rotondo said. “You hear about things like this happening. You don’t expect it to happen to you.”

And yet, Lindsey Rotondo said, aside from keepsakes like her son’s ultrasound picture or antiques from her grandparents, most everything she lost is replaceable.

“Truly, things are things,” she said. “And at the end of the day you can get new things. And you know, I told my husband, we’re together. And thank God. Thank God for that.”

Aside from the Rotondos' home, the blaze razed two storage sheds and a pump house. The only mark the fire left on Danielle Krawczeski’s house are a few melted blinds. Their parents' home is completely intact.

The couple felt numb after receiving the news, Lindsey Rotondo said.

“It really doesn’t sink in until time goes by,” she said. “And then randomly I’ll just think about something that is gone. You know, just little things. And then it just kind of starts to hit you.”

They tried to tough out a few more days at the theme park, for their son’s sake. But when Sunday rolled around they knew they couldn’t bear to stay any longer.

Lindsey Rotondo tried to prepare her son for the sad sight. Since they returned late Sunday, he has been staying at her parents' home. He can see the ravaged home from their lanai.

More: How to help the firefighters battling the Golden Gate Estates blaze

More: How to help victims of Golden Gate Estates brush fire east of Naples

“I told him that there was a fire in the yard and that it’s going to look different,” Lindsey Rotondo said. “I think he can definitely sense that something is wrong, just by the way he’s acting, but you know, so long as we are with him he’s OK.”

Rotondo and her family can stay in their parents' spare room for now. The most immediate need, Rotondo said, is figuring out a driving arrangement for her husband since he used his motorcycle to get to work and the two now have to share her car. Her sister, Danielle Krawczeski, set up a Go Fund Me page to help raise money and start replacing their lost belongings.

The Rotondos were renting their home. They would love to buy the place and rebuild, Rotondo said. They had repainted and renovated the whole home.

And though the family suffered loss and heartache, they’re grateful for the many things crews were able to save.

“You appreciate fire departments,” Tamie Krawczeski said. “But you love them after this.”