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The victims were staying at an Airbnb when a fire broke out in the early morning hours of June 13.

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For six months, family members planned a trip from their homes in the Lawrence area to the “motherland” — the Dominican Republic — to explore, reconnect to their family roots, and perform a baptism on two of their youngest. 

But, as the 12 family members were asleep at their first stop in Barahona, a fire broke out in the Airbnb in the early morning hours of June 13, eventually killing four.

“In a matter of minutes, our lives changed forever,” the family wrote on GoFundMe. 

The four family members include a 5-year-old boy; Luzybeldriz Fadul, 42; Pancracia Mercedes Rodríguez, 75; and Jhoselin del Carmen Rojas, 69. Family members declined to share the name of the boy, who was from Lawrence. 

The family has ties to the country that go back for generations, said Sabrina Perez, a family member, by phone on Tuesday. 

The long-awaited trip was supposed to last three weeks with plans to explore the entire island. 

Perez learned of the news when she got a phone call from her niece at 6 a.m. following the fire. She was at home in Methuen and took the first flight she could to help the survivors. Her family members were spread across four different hospitals, making it difficult to coordinate care, she said. 

Two of the family members, Rodriguez and Rojas, died on the same day on June 21, after an extended stay in the intensive care unit in the hospital. 

The family decided to do funeral services for the older members of the family in the Dominican Republic because the cost to transport them back to the U.S. was too much. 

They will hold a memorial service for the boy in Lawrence, where he attended public schools. 

Perez said she has positive memories of her family, who would get together every Sunday for dinner. They would switch off which house they would go to in Methuen, Haverhill, or Lawrence. 

“We were always happy the moment we saw each other,” said Perez. “There were hugs and kisses and food and conversations.”

The boy, one of the children who was supposed to get baptized, was always happy, Perez recalled. 

“We would take him to trampoline parks, Chuck E Cheese. He enjoyed going to kids’ birthday parties,” Perez said. “He was such a happy child.” 

Natasha Salas, another family member, set up a GoFundMe page to help cover emergency medical care and hospitalization costs, as well as funeral and memorial expenses. So far, it has raised close to $9,000, far shy of the $250,000 goal. 

“We left for a family vacation,” the GoFundMe post reads. “We never imagined we would be fighting for our lives.” 

The fire was unrelated to the huge blaze that ravaged a Dominican Republic Beach resort in Bayahibe on June 19, killing one person.