It’s been over a month since fire destroyed the Brown Street apartment Lori Brogan and her fiancA?©e Joseph Langley called home, and they still don’t have a new place to live.

They’ve looked continuously, but they haven’t been able to find anything. For now, they’re sleeping on friends’ couches, using a friend’s mailing address and living out of bags. When they can scrape together enough money, they said they might stay in a hotel one night as a welcome change.

“I’m having a really hard time with it,” said Brogan, who said she sometimes goes back to the 195 Brown St. address to look at the empty space where her apartment used to be. “It was a home,” she said, the nicest she and Langley had shared together. She said she still feels like she’s in a state of shock.

“We’re homeless,” she said. “Somebody please, we need an apartment.”

“Once we find an apartment, I think we’ll be alright,” said Langley. “We’ll figure the rest out.”

On the morning of the fire, firefighters thought perhaps Brogan was still in the building after it had gone up. But Brogan was at a friend’s having coffee.

It wasn’t until half of the building had collapsed, that she came running up Brown Street and saw her home half-burned and being doused by two fire hoses.

Right now all they’re concentrating on is finding an apartment and starting over. They said they lost absolutely everything in the fire with the exception of a single photograph. The photograph is of Brogan pointing at the engagement ring Langley bought her that was lost in the fire along with everything else.

Brogan said one of the most important things she lost was pictures of her children, who don’t live with her, but whom she shares custody of with their father.

Langley said he also lost the U.S. flag used in his father’s burial, as well as his father’s brass pins and the shell casings of the bullets shot off in his father’s honor at the funeral. Both Brogan and Langley lost a scrapbook they’d kept of the two years they’d been together.

The couple said they’re trying to keep their spirits up regardless of what they’re going through and have tried to concentrate on what they still have instead of what they lost.

“I’m just glad we’re all alive,” Brogan said.

Brogan, 37, and Langley, 34, had planned to get married in the fall but will now be putting the wedding on hold. They said they had already begun making plans for the ceremony and had gotten gift cards from retail stores that were lost in the fire.

“They would be so handy right now,” said Brogan.

Brogan also said she was working towards getting back into cosmetology but that will be put on hold as well. For now, Langley, who does roofing work, said he’s trying to stay busy, but the rainy weather in recent weeks has kept him from working as much as he’d like to. And when he works, he ends up having to do a load of laundry because he only has two pairs of jeans.

The couple is just hoping to find an apartment. They’ve asked that anyone with information on an apartment to call Brogan’s father, Thomas Brogan, at 878-0805.

Until they find an apartment, they’ll continue to rely on the help of others, including the residents who came out to support them at the spaghetti dinner on Saturday at St. Anthony’s parish. “I’d like to say thank you to everybody for their support and their help,” said Brogan, who added she wasn’t a parishioner at St. Anthony’s but is thinking of becoming one after the benefit dinner.

For now, Brogan and Langley said they’re just taking it one day at a time. “This is the biggest wake up call I’ve ever had in my life,” said Brogan. “From now on, I’m taking every day like it’s the last.”

The couple has already started a new scrapbook to replace the old one. “I’ve been buying little trinkets,” said Langley.

Lori Brogan and fianc

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