Air purifier credited for saving family during large apartment fire in Texas

After a two-alarm structure fire at a northwest Austin, Texas, apartment complex displaced 16 residents, one family was saved thanks to an air purifier. 

The Aleman family tells Fox 7 Austin that they are thankful to have survived and are now trying to recover after losing their home and everything in it.

The fire happened in the early morning hours on January 18. 

“I woke up to a loud, it sounded like an explosion, like phew, I didn’t know what it was, I really thought someone was breaking into my apartment at that point,” Jayd Aleman told Fox 7 Austin.

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Aleman said that no smoke alarms went off but what did go off was their air purifier.

“It was like this moment of quiet, and we’re in this dark living room and all I can hear is my air purifier beeping, and it’s red, it’s reading 900, clean air, it reads around 10 to 15, so that’s extremely dirty, it was like beep beep beep, super loud,” Aleman said.

After realizing the magnitude of the situation, Aleman and her husband woke up their three children, called 911, and alerted their neighbors. 

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While they lost everything and are working to rebuild and recover from the disaster, Aleman said a new air purifier will be at the top of their list. 

“We will buy another air purifier, and we will probably put one in every room,” Aleman said.

A GoFundMe page was created by a family friend to help alleviate the burden and costs of losing everything for the Aleman family, who are sleeping on mattresses on the floor at a sister property of their former apartment complex. 

According to fire officials, the cause of the fire is still under investigation.