A fire at a Cape Coral home displaces couple and their dog

On Saturday night, smoke filled a home in Cape Coral leaving a couple and their dog without a place to stay. While they are now in a hotel, what may look like a small bit of damage is causing a large problem.

Michelle and John Fontes have been renting their Cape Coral home for just over a year now. John travels back and forth from Ohio for his bone cancer treatment.

“I’m just lucky ma’am that I wasn’t in Ohio. If I was in Ohio, my wife or my dog could have been dead. and I wasn’t here. And now I have to sit here with nothing. and live somewhere that I shouldn’t be living,” John said.

Now, the home has heavy smoke damage, is surrounded by yellow caution tape and has been red-tagged.

They say, however, that their property management company isn’t helping.

“I’ve been calling them since 6 o’clock yesterday evening and they still ain’t answering my questions. They still haven’t made a call. They still…I have other people and other agencies calling the same company and they’re getting the same results I got,” he said.

The Cape Coral Fire Department said that the fire that displaced the Fontes family on Saturday can be traced back to a leaky spigot.

John Fontes said he called the property management company when he initially discovered the leak. The property managers did call another company to fix it.

Fire crews say that when the copper piping inside the spigot was being fixed, the heat charred the wood framing inside of the walls. Which, later, that heat produced a great deal of smoke.

“We walked in the room and it was already smokey. The bathroom was terrible. The roof was smoking all the way across,” John said.

When firefighters exposed the walls, they were able to see a lot of damage. The Fontes and their dog are safe now. But, they’re worried about health problems that may develop due to the smoke.

“I took him to the emergency room last night because he was having shortness of breath and migraines and his nose from the smoke was burning,” Michelle said.

The couple says they’ve spent hours trying to reach someone from the property management company but the only thing they’ll say is to contact their rental insurance company.

“At the very least you’d expect the company to reach out. This is not your everyday thing. A house is on fire. Lives are in jeopardy,” said Michelle.

WINK News contacted the property management company but we were told to send an email to their local office and other representatives. We have not yet heard back.