BRIDGEPORT — It's been six months, but for Jacqueline Gonzalez it might as well be an eternity.

Every minute of every day she relives the June 13 fire that consumed her home and possessions and killed four of her neighbors in the apartment building at 1647-49 Iranistan Avenue.

Since then, the anxiety of falling asleep and waking up to another fire has turned her into an insomniac. Her dread of leaving the stove, the oven or any other electrical or gas-powered device on has made her obsessive-compulsive.

"I have to stay awake," she said, walking through her new apartment on Maplewood Avenue. "I have to make sure everything is closed and off. I can't let anything happen to my kids."

The smell of burning wood from that day lingers in her senses; she's constantly sniffing her apartment for fire.

Thinking back to June 13, Gonzalez still wonders if she could have done something more to save her neighbors' three children — Hoang Anh, 14; his sisters, Thi My Trinh, 11 and Daisey, 3 — and their mother, Thi Luong Thach.

All were found dead in their bedrooms.

"He was such a nice boy," recalls Gonzalez of Hoang Anh. "If he saw me carrying a lot of packages, he would always offer to help."

Several times each night, Gonzalez, 29, said she awakens to nightmares. Sometimes she sees herself stumbling through a smoke-filled room.

Sometimes she smells a burning fire in her dreams.

Other times she hears her children screaming.

"That's what happened Sunday," she said recalling a nightmare in which she thought she heard 5-year-old Ashley screaming for her.

"I woke up and ran toward her room when I hit my leg," she said pointing to a cut and bruise on her calf. As it turned out, Ashley was not screaming but asleep and safe.

Gonzalez wishes everything else could be as sound as Ashley's sleep that night.

Instead, her longtime companion, Junior Palomares, has taken on more jobs to help pay the nearly $400 rent increase. "Junior is always working," she said. " We never see him."

Her son, Mark, 7, talks about hating the fire and what it did to his family.

"I have to explain to him that it's part of life," she said.

Still, his asthma and heart problems have intensified. "The doctors say he may have to have another operation for his heart," she said.

Gonzalez says 5-year-old Ashley pretends there is a fire when she plays with others. Social workers told her this is normal.

Her older daughter, Gladielis, 11, refuses to discuss what happened that night.

"She holds it in," said her mother.

Thinking back to that day, Gonzalez recalls how Ashley woke up, asking for something to eat.

As Gonzalez sleepily walked to her kitchen to toast a waffle, she smelled "something weird."

She bent down and smelled smoke coming up through her floor. She ran to an open living room window and saw flames licking at the siding outside. So Gonzalez screamed "fire" for all to hear then, dialed 911 on her cell phone, while rushing to the room where Gladielis was sleeping with her cousin, Crystal. "I grabbed them and pulled them out of bed," she recalled. "I told them to get Markie and get out and tell the others."

The screaming girls passed the Thach apartment on the way down the stairs. They banged on the door of the first-floor apartment of Crystal's mother and Jacqueline's sister, Jessica Gonzalez.

"All I can remember is running," said Jessica Gonzalez, who was pregnant with recently born Princess Kyera at the time.

She said she ran from room to room to get her children, Lois and Ryan.

It was not until she was outside that Jessica saw the fire burning through the second and third floors.

"It was horrible," she said. Meanwhile, Jacqueline Gonzalez fought through the smoke filling her apartment to find Ashley, now standing on her bed, crying in terror.

"I grabbed her and told her to keep her head against my chest," Gonzalez said. "I told her to hold on real tight & that mommy's going to get us out; that whatever happens, don't let go."

With that, Gonzalez fled down the rear stairway through blinding smoke stinging her eyes. "I kept screaming to anyone who could hear to get out."

On the second-floor landing, she bumped into something. It was Rinh Thach, Gonzalez's second-floor neighbor, who was desperately trying to reach his family.

"When I got up, I just pushed and pushed him, telling him to get out," she said.

Thach, who speaks and understands little English, got out but his family didn't. His wife and three children died in the blaze.

"My sister's a hero," said Jessica Gonzalez. She credits Jacqueline with saving her life and her children. "I don't even want to think of what might have happened if Jacqueline did not do what she did." Now, Jacqueline Gonzalez looks at a nearly bare living-room wall. She talks about how the one in the Iranistan Avenue apartment was filled with photographs of her children.

"I could look and see how they grew from the day they were born until the fire," she said. "Those photographs meant a lot to me. I have none now."

Gonzalez said she hasn't had good luck with her new apartment on Maplewood Avenue.

Even with her doors locked, burglars kicked one in the day before Thanksgiving and stole jewelry, money, her children's Nintendo Game Cube, videos and wrapped Christmas presents.

Now, a 2-by-4 joins the three locks as a bar against intruders. "It's not the same anymore," she said.

But if nothing else, Jacqueline Gonzalez wishes someone would hire her sister, Jessica, to work as a cashier.

"She's a single mom with four children and she really needs help," said Jacqueline Gonzalez. "We share everything. She's doing the best she can with what she has, but she needs a job."

Michael P. Mayko, who covers legal issues, can be reached at 330-6286.