Ohio

Family of 11 Saved By ‘an Angel' Who Alerted Them of a Raging House Fire Overnight

Haily Strong's actions helped Josh Ellis, Brittany Downing and their nine kids get to safety

Smoke coming in under door

A family of 11 in Fairfield, Ohio, was saved from tragedy earlier this month when a complete stranger knocked on their door in the middle of the night to let them know their house was aflame.

“Your guys’ garage is on fire!” Haily Strong can be heard saying on a doorbell camera on July 5.

Strong saw the fire around 1 a.m. and drove toward it, without knowing who was in the home or who lived there.

Josh Ellis and Brittany Downing were in bed, while their nine kids were also inside the home, completely unaware that a blaze had erupted since smoke detectors were not going off.

“All the other outcomes that could have happened if she wouldn’t have stopped and knocked on the door, I don’t know if me and him would be here today for them kids,” Downing told NBC affiliate WLWT in Cincinnati.

Everyone managed to escape the home without injury.

“That’s an angel,” Ellis said of Strong. “She saved our family, no exaggeration about that. She stayed and she saved our family. I mean, the house was ablaze.”

Strong said she was so focused on helping these strangers that she didn’t have time to notice how worried she was.

“I definitely can see that I’m scared, but I don’t remember feeling as scared as I look in the video,” she told WLWT. “I just remember feeling like, ‘I got to get these people out of here. I got to get them across the street.’”

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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