Just before 5 a.m. on Oct. 15, Melvin and Rose Cox woke up to a beeping sound that wasn't their alarm clock.
Just minutes later, a banging on their door.
"The building is on fire. You need to get out now," their neighbor, a young man, told them.
The retired couple quickly got dressed and left the building. Then they moved their car from right outside their first-floor apartment to a spot further away.Â
Time moved slowly after that, Rose Cox said.
From the parking lot, they watch the blaze continue to rise.
"It was just numbing," she said. "It was surreal."
The three-alarm fire, started by a cigarette that was improperly disposed, enveloped the apartment building part of the Black Sand Apartment Homes complex in North Lincoln that morning, leaving $2.5 million in damages.
People are also reading…
The Coxes were two of 50 people displaced by the fire.
"When you find yourself in a tragedy or in a tough situation, you have to have a plan," Melvin Cox said.
As soon as the fire died down that morning, he put in a request with the leasing office for a new apartment.
By lunchtime that day — just six hours later — the Coxes were eating with other displaced residents at the apartment complex's clubhouse when they learned that another apartment was available just a couple of buildings over. It was also on the first-floor, which they needed due to medical issues like arthritis.Â
Before the first, they had lived in their apartment for two and a half years, and they said they were "very lucky" not to suffer smoke or water damage — one of only nine apartments in the building that did not.Â
The day after the fire, the Coxes were able to return to their old apartment to collect their belongings.Â
Other residents were not so fortunate.
Twenty-five-year-old Whitney Hinn, a bioanalyst at Celerion, had been living in the apartment building since June with two roommates and her dog.
Fire investigators marked her apartment unstable due to smoke and water damage, so Hinn wasn't allowed back to her apartment to collect her things until last weekend — two weeks after the fire.
She relied on donated clothes and food from family and friends.Â
"We were devastated we couldn't go back in," Hinn said.
Fortunately, she had renter's insurance, which was still calculating the cost of her losses as of Thursday, she said. Her bed and electronics couldn't be salvaged.
Despite the ordeal, Hinn says Black Sand Apartment Homes is "really nice" and she signed a lease in a different building in the complex.Â
The Coxes and Hinn were placed at Staybridge Inn and Suites near Interstate 80, the cost covered by their renter's insurance.
"It’s kind of tough because you want to go home after work and relax and it’s not really your home," Hinn said.Â
Authorities deem the building a total loss and former residents have to have their items out by 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Maintenance workers were present as people gathered their things.Â
Melvin and Rose Cox are thankful for the Lincoln community — everyone from firefighters and police to the Black Sand employees and residents.
"You don't really talk to your neighbors often," he said. "But when something like this happens, you now have a bond ... even if it's a bond you didn't want to happen."