“Grey’s Anatomy” star Caterina Scorsone has opened up about how she and her three children survived a fire that destroyed their home and left their four pets dead.
“A few months ago my house burned down,” the actor wrote in an Instagram post on Monday. “As I was getting my kids ready for bed and finishing their bath, smoke started seeping through the grout around the tub. When I looked down the hall, a river of thick black smoke had already formed and was filling the house.”
Scorsone said she “had about two minutes” to get her daughters — Lucky, 3, Paloma, 6, and Eliza, 10 — out, and I made do with less than the shoes.
Heartbreakingly, we lost all four of our pets. We are still grieving this loss but blessed to love them fully,” she wrote.
She shared a carousel of photos of the scraps left behind, memories of the house and their pets.
Scorsone, who shares her daughters with ex-husband Rob Giles, grew up in Toronto, Canada, but later moved to Southern California. She plays Dr. Amelia Shepherd in the hit medical drama shot primarily in Los Angeles.
She said she posted her message to celebrate the community that helped her afterward.
“This is a love letter to the incredible people who came out and the incredible ways they came out,” she wrote. “Thanks to the firemen and detectives (thanks Trey!) Thanks to my neighbor who answered our frantic knocking on the door.”
She also thanked the parents at her children’s school who sent toys and books, her friends from “Grey’s Anatomy” for sending clothes and supplies, her sisters who came to help and her team.
“What I’ve learned is that the only thing that matters is the people (and beings) you love. The only thing that matters is the community. We wouldn’t be here without him and we are very grateful. Thank you,” he wrote.
Scorsone’s Amelia Shepherd, Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd’s younger sister, is the chief of neurosurgery at Gray Sloan Memorial on “Grey’s Anatomy.” She joined the series in 2010 during the show’s seventh season.
