A man whose apartment block was left uninhabitable after a fire has shared an emotional account of the days that followed, saying the hardest part wasn’t the blaze itself—but what came after.In a heartfelt post on social media, Stephen Vassallo described how residents were forced to leave their homes after a fire broke out in the common areas of the apartment block where he lives.While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, Vassallo said it appeared to have started near the building’s electricity meters.Although the flames were eventually extinguished, he said the real ordeal had only just begun.“Within a few minutes, we were told to gather a few belongings and leave our home,” he wrote. “Suddenly, we found ourselves standing in the street, trying to work out where we would sleep that night and what tomorrow would look like.”Vassallo said eight families were displaced, but claimed that in the days that followed, none of the authorities contacted them to ask if they were coping, whether they had somewhere safe to stay or if they needed practical support.“Not a single call,” he wrote. “It wasn’t the smoke or the damage. It was the silence.”He also described being passed from one entity to another while trying to navigate the aftermath, saying responsibility appeared to shift while families were left to rebuild their lives on their own.As someone who works professionally with people experiencing trauma and grief, Vassallo said the experience reinforced an important lesson.“Recovery is not only about repairing buildings. It is about recognising the human beings living inside them.”He ended his post with a plea for greater compassion in the aftermath of emergencies.“Sometimes the greatest form of emergency response isn’t another machine, another report or another investigation,” he wrote. “Sometimes, it’s simply remembering to care.”What do you make of Stephen’s comments?•