“Is this important?” Keith Grindstaff asks his daughter as he points to a folder of papers.

“That was important, but it can go. Just toss it, dad,” Brook Grindstaff said.

The folder was full of articles she liked, Brook said, but they were ruined.

Brook is a victim of Friday’s fire at Ivy Chase Apartments.

The roof collapsed Brook’s apartment. This and water damage, according to Brook, is what ruined all of her and her roommates’ stuff.

Brook had completely moved out of her parents’ house.

“My room [at my parents’ house] is a guest room, so everything I own was here,” she said.

She would have grabbed her wallet if she could have because it has all of her identification. She said her wallet is ruined, but the plastic cards are OK.

Friday morning, Brook and her roommates were asleep when the fire started, according to Brook.

“I was just in shock,” she said. “I honestly didn’t think it was happening.”

She said when she left her apartment early Friday morning — around 2:30 — she only grabbed sweatpants and a jacket because she thought she was going to be outside for 30 minutes and then go back inside.

Around 3 a.m., Brook said she called her mom, Charlene Grindstaff. At this point, she still didn’t realize her apartment was on fire.

Charlene said when she got the phone call, it scared her but she settled down after she knew Brook was OK.

When Brook called her mom, Charlene was still awake because she had been waiting for her son — still in high school — to come home. At 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Charlene had been awake since 5:45 a.m. on Thursday.

“I never went to bed,” she said.

After calling her mom, Brook went back into her apartment around 6 a.m., only for the Fire Department to prove to her that her bedroom was inaccessible at the time.

Another four hours later — around 10:00 a.m. — Brook and her roommates went into their apartment and started moving their salvageable items. They were given 30 minutes to do this, before the Fire Department kicked them out because the building was condemned, Brook said.

“So we grabbed all we could,” she said. “There’s stuff up there that we just can’t get.”

She said their kitchen and closets are still full of things that might be salvageable, but they just can’t get to it because the apartment building is fenced in.

However, there is stuff Brook and her family were able to get that they were unable to keep — like the folder of articles.

She said she doesn’t think her computer’s hard drive made it through the fire. The fire was close to her computer.

On her computer, Brook said she had pictures from high school and college. Pictures that were important to her. And, she said her backup for her computer is under her bed, unable to be reached.

Losing sentimental stuff, like the pictures on her computer, is the hardest part, according to Brook.

“I can’t get those back,” she said.

But, what leaves her lost is not having stuff like furniture and class notes, she said.

“We have no furniture,” she said.

Brook said she and her roommates will have to “scrounge something up.” But its not just furniture — she’ll have to replace textbooks, notebooks or notes from her classes.

“I’ll have to get stuff from friends and professors,” she said.

Her family, who drove from Charlotte Friday morning and stayed all day, is supporting Brook through this change.

“I told her as long as she’s OK, we can fix the rest,” Charlene said.

Scott Kincaid, Brook’s boyfriend and a sophomore in history, said he is trying to help Brook in any way he can. He helped her move her stuff from the apartment to a garage she rents in the parking lot.

Kincaid’s parents, Brent and Becky Kincaid, said they came to Raleigh from Winston-Salem Friday to help Brook move her stuff, separate the salvageable and destroyed and give moral support.

Brook and the other people whose apartments were damaged by the fire were still in shock, she said on Friday.

“I don’t think it’s really sunk in,” she said. “It hasn’t for me.”