DETROIT – A Detroit family of five needs help after they lost everything in a house fire last week.
“She woke up screaming at 2:50 in the morning,” Duane Johnson said.
Johnson said in just five minutes, the flames and heavy smoke filled his daughter’s bedroom. His wife and two other children were downstairs.
Johnson remembers every detail from that fire that extensively damaged his home on Feb. 29.
The home looks fine on the first two floors, but the damage is evident approaching the third floor, where a room is completely gone.
“When I got up here, all I saw was the flames, like right there, and I saw smoke coming at this level. After I got the family out, I tried to fight it. I was grabbing buckets; the buckets had holes in them. I ended up slipping and falling down the stairs,” Johnson said.
Johnson said that didn’t help.
Days later, the family is living in a hotel. The house is inhabitable but through it all, Johnson said there’s a bright side: “We’re alive, that’s the biggest thing, we’re alive.”
A GoFundMe page has been created to help the family.