“Grey’s Anatomy” star Caterina Scorsone has recounted how she and her three children escaped a blaze that destroyed their house and left their four pets dead.
“A couple of months ago my house burned down,” the actor wrote in an Instagram post Monday. “While getting my kids ready for bed and finishing bath time, smoke began to seep up through the grout around the tub. When I looked down the hallway 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 of the house, “and we escaped with less than shoes on our feet.”
“Heartbreakingly, we lost all four of our pets. We are still sitting with that loss, but we are lucky we got to love them at all,” she wrote.
She shared a carousel of photos of the rubble left behind, memories in the home 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 portrays Dr. Amelia Shepherd on the hit medical drama, which is filmed mostly in Los Angeles.
She said she posted her message to celebrate the community that helped her in the aftermath.
“This is a love letter to the incredible people that showed up and the incredible ways that they did,” she wrote. “Thank you to the firefighters and the investigators (thank you Trey!) Thank you to my neighbor who answered our frantic knocks at her door.”
She also thanked parents at her kids’ school who sent toys and books, her friends at “Grey’s Anatomy” for sending clothes and supplies, her sisters who flew in to help and her team.
“What we learned is that the only thing that matters are the people (and beings) that you love. The only thing that matters is community. We would not be here without it and we are so grateful. Thank you,” she wrote.
Scorsone’s Amelia Shepherd, the younger sister of Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd, is head of neurosurgery at Grey Sloan Memorial in “Grey’s Anatomy.” She joined the series in 2010 during the show’s seventh season.