A community effort is underway to help a Bridgeport firefighter and his family after flames destroyed their home in Fairfield early Sunday morning. The house on Alma Drive is now boarded up, masking the massive damage inside.

“The inside is just fiberglass and ceiling and burnt furniture,” said Jess Mentes, choking up as she noted all that is gone. “Our wedding albums. Everything. Baby books. Every award my kids ever got.”

But Mentes knows things could've been far worse. Her husband Mike is a Bridgeport firefighter and was at work at the time. Their three daughters, ages 16, 14 and 11, happened to be at a sleepover.

“It was by chance they weren't there,” Mentes explained.

She was home alone with the family's two pets and fast asleep until around 3 a.m. when the cat jumped on her chest.

“She was on top of me, clawing me, and I could hear the smoke alarm going off—which, I don't know if that woke me up but definitely her,” Mentes explained. “She was going crazy, and when I sat up, I just knew something wasn’t right. I turned on the light and there was black smoke rolling over my head.”

Mentes told News 12 she knew she had to leave quickly. She kicked out the screen of her bedroom window, then hoisted the family’s 75-pound dog through it. Mentes said she followed without shoes or a coat, carrying the cat in a pillowcase, and waited on the front lawn until firefighters arrived.

“They have nothing right now. The house is being condemned,” said Brittany Christophersen, a close friend and firefighter who’s organized a fundraising effort to help the Mentes family start over.

“Mike is a firefighter. Jess is a nurse, so their whole life is about helping the community. They're usually the people that are taking care of everybody else in the neighborhood. We're just trying to do what we can to try to repay some of the kindness they've shown us over the years,” Christophersen explained.

Firefighters returned to the home Sunday in a personal capacity to help board up windows and walls and see if anything was salvageable. Neighbors have rallied around them, too.

“I'm wearing somebody else's clothes, somebody else's coat. My neighbors have really gone above and beyond. I really can't even tell you the amount of support we've gotten from our firemen family,” Mentes said. “I feel incredibly blessed, and we feel loved.”

Mentes and Christophersen also stressed the importance of having working smoke detectors and reminded people to check their batteries. They credit smoke detectors, along with the cat, for saving her life.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, but Mentes said it appears to have been an electrical issue.

If you’d like to help the Mentes family, click here.