A family of six was displaced Tues., May 10, 2022, by a fire that broke out around 7:45 a.m. at their home on the 2400 block of North Fourth Street in Harrisburg. (Photos courtesy of Shanita Jones)
A husband, wife and their four young children are searching for a new place to live after a Tuesday fire destroyed their Harrisburg home, the second time in four years they’ve been displaced by a fire.
Four years ago, Shanita Jones and her husband Quintell Samuels lost their family home on Hummel Avenue in Camp Hill to a fire. Since then the family has rented a row home on the 2400 block of North Fourth Street.
On Tuesday morning their efforts to rebuild their lives were torn apart by another house fire.
Jones was running a bath for her 2- and 3-year-old children around 7:45 a.m. when she realized her balcony was engulfed in flames. She grabbed her kids and got out of the house. Samuels also escaped, but went back inside to rescue the family cat, as well as some money, paperwork and clothing.
“Everything we have is in our truck,” Jones said Thursday. “That’s our entire home that we could salvage.”
Their 10-year-old child does not have any spare clothing, Jones said, and their 2- and 3-year-olds have minimal belongings. They are rewashing the clothing they do have, and using food stamps to buy non-perishable food that can be cooked in a hotel room.
The family has started a GoFundMe to help them find a new place to live and buy new belongings.
Jones said Harrisburg fire officials told her the fire originated from power supply lines running to her neighbor’s home, sending sparks raining down onto a couch she had on her balcony. The couch caught fire and spread to the balcony, then to the roof and into the ceiling.
The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire said on Facebook the fire started around 7:19 a.m., with light smoke visible from the State Street bridge. Two people called 911 to report the fire, officials said, and someone tried to extinguish the flames with a garden hose. Firefighters were on the scene for about two hours Tuesday.
Fire officials were not immediately available to answer questions on the cause of the fire.
When Jones and Samuels went into the house after the fire, they discovered the first and second-floor ceilings had collapsed onto most of their belongings. The home also had plenty of water damage from the roof down to the basement.
Jones, Samuels and their children —ages 2, 3, 4 and 10 — have been staying in a hotel on Allentown Boulevard, but they need to find a new place to go by Friday morning. They said the Red Cross gave them about $1,000 and cannot provide any additional resources.
The family said they covered the hotel costs with their own money. They are waiting on a return call from their landlord to find out whether they can move into another rental home in Harrisburg. Their rental insurance lapsed last year while they were grappling with back-to-back deaths in the family, Jones said.
Jones started a new job Wednesday and is trying to juggle work on top of shuttling her 4- and 10-year-old back and forth to Ben Franklin Elementary School in uptown Harrisburg.
She said her youngest children are struggling to understand what happened, and why they can’t go home.
“This has just been a lot for us,” Jones said. “It’s the trauma that is left after going through this twice in a five-year span.
“That was my home and now I don’t have that. I have my family, and that’s what I’m grateful for, but it’s just hard to go through twice.”
A family of six was displaced Tues., May 10, 2022, by a fire that broke out around 7:45 a.m. at their home on the 2400 block of North Fourth Street in Harrisburg. (Photos courtesy of Shanita Jones)
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