FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Kathy Kernaghan’s home is gone. It disappeared before her eyes.

Almost everything she owned was burned in the fire that consumed her trailer off Greeno Road Sunday morning, Jan. 20.

Her photographs, books, furniture, clothes. All gone now. Ashes.

A friend is trying to reconstruct her computer hard drive so maybe those memories can be saved.

“I lost everything,” Kernaghan said last week in the trailer where is she living temporarily through the kindness of the trailer park owner. “But the thing that really upsets me is my pets. I’d trade all that for my animals.”

Until that moment, Kernaghan told her story without tears.

She was sitting at a table amid boxes of clothes, food and housewares donated by a community that sped to her aid in the aftermath of a tragedy that few people suffer.

“I had left my dog and cats to go have breakfast at a friend’s home,” she said.

While she was at the nearby trailer of Sergio and Miriam Segura, her home of almost three years caught fire.

“I couldn’t see anything but black smoke,” she said. “I had worked in 911 (as a dispatcher) and knew what not to do, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to get my pets.”

She ran up the front steps and pulled open the door. At the same Segura pulled her aside as the door opened and a jet of fire gushed out. It burned the privacy fence about 10 yards away at head height.

“That’s where I would have been,” she said. “Sergio told me it was too late, but I couldn’t listen. He saved my life.”

Until Kernaghan, 64, became ill a few years ago, she had worked in public safety as a 911 dispatcher in Robertsdale and St. Louis, Mo.

She has heard hundreds of emergencies and tragic cases from the other end of the phone and knows the toll it takes on people trying to put their lives back together.

But having to live it herself is not what she had planned for this time in her life.

She gets by on a small disability check — and now, with the help of a lot of friends.

“The response has been overwhelming,” she said. “These people have been so kind to me and need recognition.”

That’s all she wants right now, she said, is for the public to know about the selfless efforts these people made when someone was in trouble.

She wrote out a list of everyone who helped. But she kept adding to it, as she described it.

It reads, verbatim, like this:

“Sergio and Miriam Segura (He saved my life, and I stayed with them for several days after the fire).

Susie and Tommy Bozeman (She is a police dispatcher I used to work with and he is a Fairhope fire fighter. Household goods and fought fire and removed my pets).

Beth Windsor (A friend of mine who is in GIS at 911 in Robertsdale. She sold me the trailer and responded to the scene. She also gave me money.) [Susie, Tommy and Beth took care of the removal of my pets. Lachlan (3-year-old male sheltie), Bee (2-year-old no special breed female cat), Boppa (2-year-old no special breed male cat), and Lula (2-year-old no special breed female cat).]

Fairhope Police Officer Heidi Loftis, Lots of groceries.

Dwayne Logan (Fairhope utility worker). Lots of dishes and household items from the city of Fairhope.

Anne and Richard Baron (Lafayette, La.), my sister and brother-in-law who sent money.

Michelle and Chris Karam (Texarkana, Texas), my niece and her husband who sent me money.

Lucy Ziolkowski (Lafayette, La.), a friend who sent me money.

Sister Julie Guillot, Eastern Shore Affordable Houses Inc., washer and dryer.

Bill and Elizabeth Carrigan, owners of the trailer park who have provided me with lots of household goods and a trailer to live in.

Oleta Webb, a friend from Pensacola who has provided household goods.”

She added Ecumenical Ministries to the list as she went through each name.

While Kernaghan continues to put her life back together with the help of her neighbors and friends, she also volunteers at Sister Julie’s Resale Shop on Section Street.

“I have so much stuff and not enough volunteers,” Sister Julie Guilott said, as Kernaghan separated piles of clothes this week in the warehouse part of the large thrift-store operation.

“I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do really,” Kernaghan said last week at the temporary trailer that is her new home for now. “But I do believe in God and feel that when one door closes another one opens.”

After drying her eyes about her lost pets, she started talking again about the long list of people who were there for her in her hour of need.