By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – In their small hotel room, Louis Arroyo’s 4-year-old son asks the same thing over and over.

“When are we getting a new house?”

Arroyo has avoided the question for four days. He doesn’t know the answer.

“So what do I do? I take him to the pool, take him to play video games, distract his mind a little bit,” he said.

But the question nags Arroyo, too.

Since fire destroyed the family’s four-bedroom apartment at Main and Newbury streets in Auburn Tuesday night, Arroyo, his pregnant girlfriend and their two small children have been living in a room with two double beds and little else.

The fire destroyed all of their belongings, including the $680 they’d saved for that month’s rent. They had no insurance.

The American Red Cross, which put up the family at the motel, said it cannot help much longer. The charity is already running a $20,000 deficit and can house the seven families left homeless from the fire for only a few more days.

Arroyo and his family have the motel room until Monday. After that, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

“Me, I’m a man. I can survive. My objective is her and the kids,” he said, nodding toward the empty hotel bed he shares with his girlfriend. “While we’re looking for an apartment, where are we going to stay?”

Fire!’

Arroyo and his family had just finished unpacking the day their apartment went up in flames.

They had recently moved into the spacious third-floor unit so their children – a 6-year-old girl, a 4-year-old boy and a baby on the way – could have their own rooms. That day, Arroyo framed his girlfriend’s sonogram and hung it on the living room wall. He added stickers and posters, the finishing touches, to his son’s and daughter’s bedroom walls.

With his kids in bed, he settled down to watch “CSI.” On TV, a building was in flames.

Suddenly, Arroyo heard pounding. Someone was shouting “Fire! Fire!”

It wasn’t happening on the screen.

When he dashed into his son’s room, the walls were already bubbling from the heat above.

Arroyo and his family grabbed their shoes and coats, fleeing into the cold March air. Arroyo ran back inside for his son’s puppy.

From the curb, he watched the flames spread from the fourth floor to his apartment, through the living room where his baby’s first picture was framed, to his daughter’s room decorated with posters.

“That was heartbreaking,” he said.

That night, the American Red Cross got the family a room at the Chalet Motel in Lewiston. Within hours, they’d gone from a comfortable apartment to a single room. They had saved a single plastic bag filled with family snapshots. Nothing else.

Arroyo and his girlfriend immediately started looking for a more permanent place. Their daughter was in first grade and had to get back to school. Arroyo worried the stress was going to hurt his girlfriend and their unborn baby girl.

Everything’s gone’

Except for Arroyo’s brother-in-law, who lived in the same apartment building and was also left homeless, they have no relatives in the area. Arroyo’s family in New Jersey sent what money they could, but it wasn’t much.

Arroyo was laid off from his job cleaning the Colisee two weeks earlier. They had no money coming in.

Local agencies offered to help the family once they found a long-term place to live, Arroyo said, but no one could get them a permanent place or the money to pay for one on their own.

When the Red Cross told him they would have to leave the motel by Friday, then by Monday, Arroyo panicked.

“Everything’s gone. The money. Everything. Everything,” he said. “We can’t get our life back in three days.”

On Friday, while his girlfriend again made the rounds at social service agencies, Arroyo stayed in the hotel and watched his kids. They played with donated toys and swam in the hotel’s pool. He tried to figure a way out.

They could move into a shelter, but few take entire families. They could use the rest of their meager savings to pay for the motel room, but when that was gone, what would they do?

Then he remembered, his daughter’s seventh birthday is next month. Easter is Sunday.

His kids sometimes ask about those celebrations. He can’t answer them any more than he can answer his son’s questions about a new house.

“My daughter wants a pink Easter basket,” he said. “I change the conversation.”

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