When a large structure fire engulfed her Coralville apartment complex on the afternoon of April 9, Sophia Griffin fled barefoot. 

Griffin, a third-year education major at the University of Iowa, had just laid down for a nap with her cat around 4 p.m. when she heard a stir in the hallway. She then looked up to see black smoke drifting past her window. Acting fast, Griffin tucked her cat into his carrier and stepped into the hallway barefoot, not wasting time to look for shoes.

“I went to go out my normal exit, and I saw that it was on fire,” Griffin said.

Using a second staircase, Griffin and her cat made it out of the building. Once outside, Griffin turned to take her first look at the apartment building in flames.

“I just stood there in shock next to the building. One of the neighbors grabbed me and pulled me further back onto the sidewalk and told me to sit down,” Griffin said. “I just remember I was crying, but none of the tears were coming out.”

Until that point, Griffin said the day had been mostly ordinary — aside from a few small breaks from her routine. Instead of heading to the library after class, as she usually did, she had an intramural soccer game later that evening and decided to go home for a nap. Had she not, nobody would have been there to carry her beloved cat to safety.

“I believe that was God having my back,” Griffin said.

Another break from routine, Griffin said, was parking in the lot instead of the attached garage — something she said she hadn’t done once since moving in last summer. It’s the only reason her car survived the fire.

But almost nothing else from Griffin’s apartment could be salvaged. She said she was able to return to her apartment several days after the fire and recover a handful of items from beneath the ash and rubble. One of those things, Griffin said, was a sentimental Bible that had once belonged to her grandfather.

“It’s a little wet, but it’s perfectly fine,” Griffin said. “I also think that is another big sign that God did have a part of this.”

Griffin described the experience as surreal. The reality of losing nearly everything in a fire, she said, was something she couldn’t fully grasp until it happened to her. At first, it was the small things that hit the hardest — realizing, as she got ready for bed at a friend’s house that night, that she didn’t have a toothbrush, a hairbrush, or a clean set of clothes to change into.

Beyond those everyday essentials, Griffin said she had spent time and effort decorating her Coralville apartment after moving from Michigan to attend the UI — filling it with pieces of home.

“I had brought all of my stuff from Michigan, including childhood things, into that apartment,” Griffin said. “That is stuff that I lost, too. Pictures and Christmas decorations I grew up with and those sorts of things.”

Now, Griffin said, she’s focused on moving forward. She’s spent the past few days staying in a hotel with her dad, who traveled from Michigan to support her. She recently signed a lease on short-term housing and will move in soon, with help from Houses to Homes — a local nonprofit that provides gently used furniture to people facing crisis. Griffin’s mom also launched a GoFundMe campaign.

While Griffin and her cat escaped the fire safely, not all pets were as fortunate.

“We did have one confirmed dog and several cats. There were some pets that didn’t make it out,” Nic Pruter, assistant chief of the Coralville Fire Department, said.

All residents made it out safely, Pruter said, though two firefighters sustained minor injuries. Both were treated at the hospital, released the same day, and have since returned to work.

While the investigation is still underway, Pruter confirmed that the fire was accidental in nature.

Pruter, who was one of 30 firefighters who responded to the scene, said crews completed an initial search for trapped residents within 10 minutes of arriving. A secondary, more in-depth search, he said, was conducted at the same time as efforts to control the fire.

“We hit it hard from the outside of the building, hit the flames that we could see,” Pruter said. “Then pushed our way inward to continue that search.”

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Another role of the responding firefighters, Pruter said, was helping connect displaced residents with support services through organizations like the Red Cross and United Way of Johnson & Washington Counties.

“These people just lost everything,” Pruter said. “Some were in their pajamas.”

Jennifer Banta, president and CEO of United Way of Johnson & Washington Counties, said United Way was also on scene immediately to help residents secure hotel rooms for the night, with the organization covering the cost.

“In addition to finding them emergency shelter, then United Way turns to that long-term recovery process, which is finding them long-term housing,” Banta said.

United Way of Johnson & Washington Counties is an umbrella organization supporting 28 local nonprofit partners focused on youth opportunity, community health, financial stability, and resilience. Banta said hotel rooms were covered through the organization’s disaster relief fund, which is supported by individual and corporate donors.

Banta said that United Way shifted away from relying on state funding when Coralville residents were impacted by a tornado in March 2023.

“The area that it hit had a high number of Haitian Creole refugees or immigrants,” Banta said. “Because they weren’t U.S. citizens, they did not qualify for any state funding.”

Now, Banta said, United Way’s disaster relief fund relies on individual and corporate donors — eliminating what Banta described as strings and qualifications that often accompany state funding.

“Making sure that nobody falls through the cracks when there is a big emergency that’s going to require both a short-term and a long-term approach to recovery,” Banta said.

For preventative measures, Banta emphasized the importance of renter’s insurance, which helps cover personal belongings and temporary housing in the event of a fire. Pruter urged residents to have an evacuation plan that includes two routes out of their building and to change the batteries in their smoke detectors every six months.