Members of an Arapahoe County family left with nothing after a Saturday-night fire consumed their home count themselves lucky to live among a tightknit group of generous neighbors.
It began when a neighbor, shouting, barreled through the front door of the home of Vasily and Elena Zhuravlev as smoke poured out of the rear.
The neighbor, Zoya Minosyan, pulled out the couple’s 6-year-old daughter minutes before flames consumed the entire structure.
Other neighbors called 911 and have donated to and hosted the family in the fire’s aftermath.
“It’s this entire neighborhood,” said 17-year-old Daniel Zhuravlev, a senior at Eaglecrest High School. “Everybody was bringing sleeping bags, pillows, water, giving us any extra thing that they had.”
On Sunday, the aid continued with a visit from a local church leader and a few envelopes of cash, he said. A woman down the street offered to set up a charitable bank account and a website to collect donations.
The Zhuravlevs’ home of eight years, now a burned-out husk, still stands in the middle-class neighborhood of tidy lawns and two-story houses on East Chenango Place in unincorporated Arapahoe County.
Vasily Zhuravlev, 51, was hospitalized for smoke inhalation and was to remain overnight on oxygen at University of Colorado Hospital, Daniel Zhuravlev said.
The family’s kitten was lost in the conflagration, but it could have been much worse.
His parents and his little sister were asleep inside when the fire broke out just before 8:50 p.m., said Zhuravlev, who was at a friend’s house at the time.
“They have no idea what happened,” he said. “Everything was fine before they went to bed. They were tucked in. It was a peaceful evening. All the sudden, the fire alarms went off.”
Minosyan, who lives a few houses away, returned from the store with her children at about that time.
She saw the plumes of black smoke, followed quickly by flames, parked her car and ran into the Zhuravlevs’ house, yelling for her neighbors to wake up and get out.
“I started screaming to call 911, and I just ran up to their house. I didn’t think about anything at the time,” Minosyan said. “There were no lights in the house. Nothing. They were upstairs in bed.”
She grabbed the little girl, but the other Zhuravlevs stayed inside at first, trying to extinguish the blaze with water.
It took 30 firefighters to put out the flames and keep them from spreading to nearby houses, according to Fire Marshal Kevin Ferry of the Cunningham Fire Protection District.
Neighbors say they feel fortunate that the winds that whipped the neighborhood earlier that day had died down.
Authorities are still investigating the origins of the fire, but they have ruled out arson, Ferry said.
The family had insurance, firefighters said.
In the meantime, Elena Zhuravlev, 46, is staying with Minosyan.
“We’re trying, the neighborhood, to get what we can to help them,” Minosyan said. “They don’t have anything left.”
Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 or jfender@denverpost.com
