Homeless family of eight loses RV in fire

Family seeking assistance after their mobile home engulfs in flames - News 11's Vanessa Gongora reports

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - One family's worst nightmare, first evicted from their home and now dealing with losing their RV and all their belongings in a fire Thursday night.

A local homeless family of eight says they lost it all in a matter of seconds. They escaped from the fire with just the clothes on their backs.

Martin Anderson says he was driving his family to Friendship Park so their kids could get wet and cool off, but then their motorhome stopped running and the carburetor backfired.

"Less than five minutes it was fully engulfed," says Martin.

Seven of the eight family members were inside and everyone made it out okay.

Andrew Anderson says it was a close call.

"My wife and I were the last two out," says Andrew. "I got some singed hairs on my arm going through and pretty hot on her coming out behind me."

There were also three dogs and six cats in the RV but one cat unfortunately did not make it.

Martin says when they take one step forward, it feels like they get knocked four steps back.

According to the Andersons, they had just bought a new generator August 9th for their RV and it got stolen days later.

"Three young hispanic males. It was a Honda Civic, two door, gray. It was missing the rear bumper and there was red paint on the right hand corner where the bumper used to be," says Martin. "They had it planned because they brought cutters to cut my clamps that I had on there to hold the generator on."

He says it happened so fast. The power turned off, their car started and they were gone.

The Yuma community and local organizations has shown the Anderson family continuous support and Andrew shares his gratitude.

"My kids, my wife, my brother, my mom, we all are seriously, seriously in your debt" Andrew says. "We are so close to being out of this permanently."

Though Martin says he does get negative comments.

"Why don't you guys get jobs, things like that. There are some of us that are working. But there's living expenses even when you're homeless," explains Martin. "When you're having to move around, break downs, things like that occur that just suck up the money. It's not just adults, we have kids, they have needs. My 14 year old nephew is special needs and there's a lot of stuff that we got to do and get for him to make his life comfortable that take money. We're not lazy people."

The Andersons say their mom does work at Walmart and Andrew's wife works at Speedway.

Martin says he has osteoarthritis which causes a lot of pain but is willing to work to help his family, though it's difficult without any reliable transportation.

They are currently staying at the Howard Johnson hotel but according to Martin, they are running out of money and don't know where they will be staying going forward.

Their ultimate goal is to get another rental home but just need some assistance.

If you would like to help the Anderson family, you can find their gofundme here. You can also donate via cashapp $martin3676, metapay @dotlocalseo on Instagram and PayPal.