MOUNT VERNON (WABC) -- In the spirit of giving, Mount Vernon residents are stepping up to help 200 people who can't return home for Thanksgiving after a fire ripped through an apartment complex.

The fire on Cottage Avenue last Sunday left hundreds with nothing for the holidays.

The community stepped up even further than bringing a mountain of donations by having a charity football game.

Firefighter Sandy Turbercio was there on Sunday night in the bucket of a tower ladder battling the five-alarm fire.

"It's hard, but to know you're in the community helping these families and younger kids, parents, single parents, they're working people," Sandy Tiburcio, with the Mount Vernon fire department, said.

Sunday's early morning fire on Cottage Avenue displaced nearly 100 families right befo

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