LUSBY, Md. — A Maryland family is struggling to recover more than a month after a devastating house fire forced them to break through windows and leap from their second floor to escape.
Owen Harrod, 77, and his 68-year-old wife Linda are still in the hospital, and their adult daughter, Aretha, is still healing from terrible burns.
"Here we go y'all: the storm is passing over," the family sang on a Zoom call.
The Harrod family said they're drawing strength from an old Black gospel song. Owen Jr. has been singing it to his mother, who is still in the ICU at the burn unit at Medstar Washington Hospital Center.
"And she gets emotional, even in her bandages," Owen Jr. said.
Doctors just moved Owen Sr. out of the ICU, and the family is hoping to bring him to live with his son, Travis, and his daughter-in-law, Nicole, in a week or so.
On Oct. 29, a fire ripped through the family home in Lusby, Maryland. Aretha woke her parents up, but flames were already coming up the stairs, so she broke through a window.
"I wasn't thinking about the glass or nothing," she said. "I just stuck my head out and inhaled."
Aretha pulled her dad out next.
"I locked elbows with him and pulled him out on the roof," she said.
He jumped off the roof and grabbed his wife Linda through a first-floor window.
"He broke the glass and pulled my mom out of the house," Aretha said.
The family had lived in the home for nearly 50 years, and it was filled with memories.
Investigators suspect some kind of electrical issue started the fire. But there was so much damage, the state fire marshal has had to leave the cause undetermined.
"We lost everything, Owen Jr., who lived with his parents, said. "The house is just ashes inside."
The family's churches and community has tried to help, raising almost $7,500 through a GoFundMe campaign.
"Everyone who's done anything counts," Aretha said, thanking the donors, her neighbors and the firefighters who responded.
But she still wakes up in terror, and her sister-in-law has to try and calm her down.
"I have to keep reminding myself, 'Nobody is in the house, we're all ok, we're all out of the house,'" she said.
The Harrod family said faith, family, and friends are helping them get through this darkest year, as they launch into singing the song their mother made them sing over and over when they were young.
"The storm is passing over!"