Just as the pandemic hit last year, Mary Martinez developed severe asthma. At times the 19-year-old struggled to breathe. One night she flailed around the house, gulping for air.
“I heard . her knocking things down as she was trying to get to my room,” her sister Christian says. “It was really scary.”
Christian, who lives with Mary and their other sister Ana, ended up taking Mary to the ER twice.
The sisters decided Mary should leave her job at a blood bank because the risk of catching the coronavirus, which can ravage a person s lungs, was too great. Afraid of bringing the virus home, Ana also quit her job at Costco.
After losing power in his apartment unit in South Austin last Monday morning, Lucas Askew awoke to the sound of pounding on this door. They said there was a fire in the apartment building. I threw my keys and my wallet in my pocket and grabbed my dogs, said Askew, a mechanical engineering major at Austin Community College. By the time we came back the whole roof was on fire, so we couldn t get any of our stuff.
Askew, who is currently staying at a hotel, spent this week surveying the damage to his unit at the Park on Brodie Lane apartment complex, where the ceiling in the living room and dining room caved in.