Starting From Scratch, a Second Time Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Silvia Alvarado and her husband, Francisco Arias, center, and three of their four children. Three years ago, Silvia Alvarado woke to black smoke, an awful, thick cloak of it, creeping into her bedroom. She corralled her four children and her husband, and they padded rapidly down the stairs, coughing, shoeless and still in pajamas. From the street, they watched their apartment burn, and with it their belongings. Recorded Thursday: "We lost everything," Ms. Alvarado, now 44, said. Todito. Every little thing burned. Ms. Alvarado and her husband, Francisco Arias, had grown up in small villages in El Salvador - known as cantones in Salvadoran Spanish - during the country's 12-year civil war. Fear was pervasive. Ms. Alvarado hid in cornfields to avoid roving guerrilleros and bullet-spitting helicopters. During the most violent times, "we just had to stay inside," Ms. Alvarado said. We were too scared to go out. Ms. Alvarado and Mr. Arias eventually fled El Salvador (they did not know each other then) and came to the United States, arriving in New York with nothing. When Ms. Alvarado came to this country, she lived with her brother in Far Rockaway, Queens, and worked as a housekeeper. She eventually met Mr. Arias, a dishwasher three years her junior, and the couple had four children together. Day by day, they had pieced together a life. But the 2010 fire in Washington Heights, which started in a downstairs laundromat, according to Ms. Alvarado, snatched them back to the starting point: no belongings, no home, and facing seemingly insurmountable challenges. "When the house was on fire, oh, I thought about many things," Ms. Alvarado said. The things, our papers, the things we'd spent so much to buy. I thought about: Where were we going to go? Because we left without shoes. From there we went to stay with my sister. She said, "If you are O.K. sleeping on the floor, you can stay here." So we stayed. After four months with Ms. Alvarado's sister - 15 people in a three-bedroom apartment - the family found a place of their own. But the rent was $2,000 a month, far more than they could afford. Mr. Arias makes about $1,600 a month working at a Morton's steakhouse, and the couple slipped into debt. For two years after the fire, they slept on an inflatable mattress, and the children slumbered on sofas or on the floor. "Every night we inflated the bed," Ms. Alvarado said. This is no good, because I would wake up in pain. I woke up with pain here, in the back. And sometimes one wakes on the floor, sometimes the bed doesn't inflate. It's very difficult to sleep like this. In December 2012, a city-subsidized apartment opened up in the West 50s. Rent would be just $213 a month. Ms. Alvarado was ecstatic. But when she saw the place it was gray-walled, grime-filled and furniture-less. "Ay, I said to myself: How are we going to buy things?" she recalled. The Children's Aid Society, a recipient agency of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, offered to help, donating $1,300 for winter clothing, pots, pans, kitchen utensils, a bed and an armoire. Mr. Arias painted the walls in the home a canary yellow. "Things, they have a lot of importance," Ms. Alvarado said. You want to wash, to have your own towel, to have your clean underwear to change into, your bed linens. To have a pretty little apartment with all of your little things. The family continues to face challenges. Mr. Arias said they are $4,000 in debt from the aftermath of the fire. He did not receive compensation for lost belongings and would like to bring a suit against the landlord of the apartment. He has contacted lawyers, but they have not been able to help him recuperate funds. Ms. Alvarado is prepared for whatever may come. She still has the inflatable bed, she said. Just in case.