A young Gaitherburg, Maryland, couple is navigating both the trauma and the expense of recovery after their home was damaged by one of the historic tornadoes that ripped through Montgomery County on Wednesday night.
Veronica Contreras Fuentes was moved to tears as she expressed gratitude for the outpouring of love from family, neighbors and friends who have helped her.
They set up a fundraiser to help her family pay a hefty home insurance deductible and replace things such as the food and kitchen items that were lost when a tree snapped and plunged through the roof of their home on Tulip Drive.
They’ve owned the home for only two years and are raising their 5-year-old son and infant daughter.
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As workers from a local landscaping company cut up the tree from their backyard, Contreras Fuentes and her husband described their horror as they watched TV news and realized a possible tornado was headed directly at their little house, which has no basement.
“Next thing I know, the house started shaking, the ground was shaking, and my husband came in screaming, and he pulled me out of her room to go in my son’s room that’s right here in the front,” Contreras Fuentes said. “And as soon as we walked from her room, just electrical sparks were there, the whole house sounded like – I can’t even explain it – it was just a roaring.”
Contreras Fuentes described doing something profoundly instinctive as she held 3-month-old Eliana in her arms: She bent her back over her daughter so that if the walls and ceiling collapsed, she would shield her child with her body.
“I’m so grateful, I really am, and I’m just happy that we’re alive,” Contreras Fuentes said. “You know, material things, they can always be re-bought and fixed, but our lives can’t.”
She said she has special gratitude for the neighbor who took them in after they ran out of the house. As the neighbor saw Contreras Fuentes cope with her shock, she took the baby and told her, “Just breathe.”
