Griswold — After a fire destroyed the home of a Navy diver and his family last week, his friends and coworkers in southeastern Connecticut and beyond have stepped up to help, raising nearly $12,000 in about a week.

John Ahnen, a Navy diver assigned to the Naval Submarine Base, said his family was already overwhelmed by the outpouring of support by his neighbors and friends in the area who opened their homes to them, offered to help them move and donated clothes and other household items. Then he found out about a GoFundMe page started to help his family, who lost their beloved dog Bella in the fire along with all their belongings.

"I was absolutely blown away," Ahnen said.

The fire occurred Dec. 1 at his home in Griswold. Ahnen said he came home early from a trip to Cape Cod for Thanksgiving to set up the house before his wife and daughter returned, getting it warm, starting a fire and cleaning up.

He said he put on Christmas music, started cleaning and organizing. He said he and his wife are "very adamant" about recycling, and when they get to the end of candles, they melt down the rest of the candle and pour the wax out and recycle the glass. He began doing that, and said with everything else he was doing, he forgot about it and went outside to chop wood for the fireplace.

He's not sure how long he was outside but estimates it was about 30 to 40 minutes and when he came back inside a black smoke had begun to fill the home and the smoke detectors in the home were going off. He made several attempts to save his dog Bella, who was inside the house, but couldn't locate her.

"I have incredible survivor's guilt because I'm not injured. To me in my heart that tells me I didn't try hard enough," he said.

He, his wife and daughter have been staying with friends and his brother as they try to piece their lives back together. They plan to move into a new home after the holidays.

In the meantime, his coworkers said they've stepped up to help a guy who's always the first to offer support to others, including showing up in force to his daughter's birthday party over the weekend. Ryan Murphy, who also is a Navy diver, said when on a run with Ahnen, he will stop every couple of minutes to pick up trash or recycling. Murphy organizes the base's annual "Care is Sharing" food drive and said Ahnen has always helped out, including this year when he spent the whole time with him.

Mathew Villafuerte, another Navy diver who works with Ahnen, said every other week Ahnen asks for donations to drop off to the homeless shelter, and that he's regularly picking recyclables out of the trash can at work. He recalled a time when he was working on a friend's boat in Rhode Island, and Ahnen dropped everything to come help him.

"That's the type of guy he is," Villafuerte said.

"We're the type of people who are used to helping others. We're not used to having our hands out," Ahnen said.

Even in wake of tragedy, Ahnen has been giving back. He and his wife are planning to start a fund at the veterinarian's office where they had Bella cremated so that anyone who encounters a similar situation won't have to worry about paying for the cremation.  He's also planning to load up his truck with her dog food to take to the local animal shelter, and he said he's interested in signing up to become a volunteer firefighter after seeing their response to the fire.

"We're going to spend our entire lives paying it forward," he said.

j.bergman@theday.com