SAN MARCOS, Texas -- A month after the fatal San Marcos apartment fire, four survivors of the fire have joined the lawsuit filed against Iconic Village apartments.

Benjamin Munoz and Abril Cardenas are two of them.

"We almost died. If it hadn't of been for the fact that I heard the glass breaking and I woke up, we wouldn't have been up in time. The smoke would've gotten to us," Munoz said.

He was two weeks away from graduating with a bachelor's degree from Texas State when the fire happened. He has shied away from speaking about the fire. Now, he finds it therapeutic to recall the events from that morning. 

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Munoz said the smoke alarms didn't go off until their entire apartment was already filled with smoke.

​"I opened up the window and I heard people from the parking lot shouting 'You need to get out of there. It's on fire.' The stairs were blocked. The guy's like 'You got to jump, man!'," Munoz said.

Munoz pierced his heel and shattered his ankle jumping out of the building from the second story. While in the emergency room with his girlfriend Abril by his side, Munoz said although it was just his ankle that was injured, he didn't want to take any chances on something else going wrong.

"I looked up at her knowing this and was like, 'I don't want to have died not telling her how much I care about her and how much I love her.' And that's when I asked her to marry me," Munoz said.

He and his now fiancé lost all of their memories and belongings that Friday morning in July.

"It's sad that we'll never have that. But it doesn't matter because we made it out and we're alive," Munoz said.

Munoz said recurring nightmares, and thoughts of entrapment have led him to seek out professional help.

"And it's really made me a little more confident in myself now. It's made me a little bit more willing to stand up and say 'Hey, life is short I need to do what makes sense and what I want to do," Munoz said.

He said he joined the lawsuit in the hopes that an event like this won't happen to anyone else in the future. His next steps are to move out of his parents’ house, get back on his feet, and get his bachelor's degree.

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