250 seniors return home 2 months after fire forced them out of St. Pete complex

St. Pete seniors displaced by fire return home

FOX 13’s Genevieve Curtis reports that senior residents at St. Pete’s Lutheran Apartment building are returning to their homes today. They were forced to evacuate just before Christmas when a fire damaged the building's electrical system, rendering it without power, water, and air conditioning.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Two months after being evacuated from their home, seniors at the Lutheran Apartments in St. Petersburg are back home.

The backstory:

An electrical fire damaged the building in December and left 250 seniors displaced. Since then, many shuffled from hotel to hotel.

Residents were evacuated from the building and could only take what they could carry out. They were told they could return in two weeks; it ended up taking nine.

Residents of Lutheran Apartments evacuated the building after a fire in December 2024.

One resident told FOX 13 he found unwrapped Christmas gifts he had been planning to package and send.

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What's next:

After the seniors were finally able to return this past Friday, residents are catching up on stacks of mail, cleaning up and grocery shopping as they try to return to some sense of normalcy.

90-year-old Liz Klier was taken out of her room on the 12th floor on a stretcher and says at one point she was moved to a roach infested motel. Coming home never felt so sweet.