WELLS RIVER — Losing a home to a fire is life-altering for any family. But for George Houghton and Sarah Higgins, tragedy struck on what should have been a joyful day.
Around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, the family’s home on Route 302 began to fill with smoke.
Thinking the problem was coming from a pellet stove that had been having issues, Houghton shut down and disconnected the stove and opened up several windows to air out the house.
After keeping an eye on the situation for about two hours, he went to bed. Houghton, 29, and Higgins, 32, had set an early alarm for Monday morning for a different kind of life-changing event.
The couple planned to wake up at 4:40 a.m. to visit a cemetery in Groton, Vt., to sing “Happy Birthday” to Houghton’s late brother, Brock.
Then the couple would head to Littleton Regional Healthcare, where Higgins had a 6:30 a.m. appointment to be induced to give birth for the third time.
But when Higgins woke up Monday morning, their bedroom was filled with so much smoke she couldn’t see clearly.
She went to a window and took a breath of fresh air before charging down the hall to check on her 11-year-old daughter, Mia. Their son, Artemis, who is nearly 2 years old, was staying with relatives because of the early morning appointment.
As Higgins was headed downstairs to safety with Mia, she saw flames and called to Houghton to get out of the house. Houghton ran downstairs and tried to beat the fire out with a sweatshirt, but the floor started to collapse underneath him, he said in an interview on Tuesday.
He yelled to Higgins and Mia to leave the house, and then made two trips upstairs: first, Houghton found the family’s olde English bulldog, Daisy, and brought her to safety. He returned to grab the couple’s cellphones, Higgins’ purse and his brother’s ashes.
“Then, I ran out and the house was pretty much up in flames by that point,” Houghton said in a phone interview from Littleton Regional Hospital Tuesday.
After getting everyone out of the house safely, the family headed to Littleton. By the time they arrived, Sarah was in labor and gave birth to the couple’s child, Brooke Houghton, Monday evening.
“All the stress from the house and the fire and risking our daughter’s potential life, I think it ended up putting her in labor,” Houghton said.
The roof of the house collapsed about 20 minutes after firefighters arrived around 5:30 Monday morning. Route 302 near Boltonville Road was closed to traffic for about an hour while fire crews managed the blaze.
In addition to those from Wells River, firefighters from Groton, Vt.; Newbury, Vt.; Ryegate, Vt.; and Woodsville responded.
Around 8:30 a.m. crews used an excavator to knock down the remains of the two-story home that the family moved into in November. The home that was not insured was valued at $54,100, according to property records.
“We lost everything. There’s no saving anything there,” Houghton said.
Wells River Fire Chief Jeff Morin said the cause of the fire was unknown, but the collapsed floor indicated that flames were coming up from the basement.
The couple is still reckoning with what to do next after losing everything and said anything would help them to move forward. Higgins is a stay-at-home mom and Houghton does a mix of “hands-on work” like carpentry, electrical, painting and insulation work.
“We pretty much lost everything, so anything helps,” Houghton said.
Friends have set up a GoFundMe to help the family secure financial support, he said. Others have brought a brand new car seat, clothes and hygiene supplies such as shampoo and toothpaste to the hospital. The family plans to stay in the hospital for a few days and the American Red Cross is helping them to set up temporary accommodations.
Houghton said the couple has a camper parked in the driveway of the Wells River house that was not damaged in the fire. They hope to restore some electricity on the property to power the camper and live in it temporarily while they work to clean up the lot and rebuild.
“There have been a lot of things I didn’t think (were) going to happen to us that have,” Houghton said Tuesday. “But I guess that’s life. You prepare for the worst and expect the best.”
CLARIFICATION: Mia is Sarah Higgins’ daughter from a previous relationship. A previous version of this story was unclear about Mia’s parentage.
