Home Care In Aberdeen, MD

ABERDEEN, Md. —

Dozens of people are without a home after a fire ripped through multiple townhouses in Harford County Saturday night, causing some to even collapse.

The number of people affected has gone up to 26, including seven children. The location that was their homes looks like a bomb went off as eight townhomes are either extensively damaged or collapsed from the fire. Fire officials believe the fire started in the back of one of these middle units.

"When I looked out the street, I could just see. It was orange. I didn't know what I was looking at, at first. I had to do a double take, and we started running," neighbor William Coleman said.

Coleman and Davia Jones’ home shook late Saturday night.

"It sounded like a bombing was happening and serious explosions. Then it just all went up in flames," Jones said.

The townhomes just down the street from them had erupted in flames. A Ring doorbell video captured one of the explosions.

"I open my garage and I just saw it engulfed. No one was outside. So, I ran around front. I didn't hear no alarms or anything. That scared me, so I started banging on all the neighbor's doors and telling them they have to get out," Jones said.

Jones likely saved some lives. She said multiple people had no idea their homes were on fire. The fire left several vehicles destroyed and three houses collapsed. Others have extensive fire, soot and water damage. The heat was so intense that it caused heat damage to homes on the other side of the street.

"You could really feel the heat. A lot of the neighbors we were talking to were talking about how you could just feel the intensity of the flames, so it was a lot. And the explosions kept happening," Coleman said.

It took Harford County firefighters two hours to get the flames under control. The block of homes is now condemned, leaving more than two dozen people, including children and animals, without their homes.

"This was definitely a lot for this community to actually go through and actually really feel the brunt of all of it. It's a lot," Jones said.

The community is now working to support the families facing devastation as Harford County Disaster Assistance and the Red Cross help out. One firefighter sustained a non-life-threatening medical issue, and no other injuries were reported. The investigation into the cause will continue. Original Story

A massive fire damaged as many as eight homes and several cars overnight in Aberdeen.

Dozens of firefighters were first called just before 11 p.m. Saturday to the 4700 block of Witchhazel Way for a fire.

Three houses suffered extensive damage, some of which collapsed inward, and houses across the street were damaged by heat.

"Some of these houses actually collapsed inward, so it's about a total of three right now with extensive damage to the other adjacent units. We're also looking at heat damage to the back side of the other houses that backed up to these," Master Deputy State Fire Marshal Oliver Alkire told 11 News.

No injuries were reported.

The fire displaced many people, including several children. They are being assisted by Harford County Disaster Assistance and the Red Cross.

The cause remains under investigation, but firefighters ruled out that the fire started in front of or inside the homes, but more likely behind the homes.

"Right now, it's looking to be about four or five vehicles that we've lost. We're looking into possibly the cause of that. Are those vehicles involved? Did that possibly start the fire?" Alkire said.

About 60 firefighters from multiple fire departments from across Harford and Cecil counties responded. Fire crews had to return to the scene to address hot spots.

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HARFORD COUNTY, MD — Count down to 2024 at the Havre de Grace Annual Duck Drop at Concord Point Park. Ring in the New Year with the Duck Drop, then watch the fireworks sparkle along the Havre de Grace waterfront afterward.

Live music and a dance will be sponsored by the Sons of the American Legion Squadron 47 in Havre de Grace on New Year's Eve with Jill Black and the Panic Attack. Doors open at 8 p.m. with a meal from 8:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. and a cash bar available all night. A champagne toast at midnight included.

There also will be a New Year's Eve party for families hosted by We Rock the Spectrum with gym play that includes sensory activities and a countdown to the New Year at noon with a balloon drop.

In the United States, one of the most popular New Year’s Eve traditions is the dropping of the giant ball in New York City’s Times Square. Other U.S. cities have adopted iterations of the ball drop — the Chick Drop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the giant Potato Drop in Boise, Idaho, for example.

The end of one year and beginning of another is often celebrated with the singing of “Auld Lang Syne,” a Scottish folk song whose title roughly translates to “days gone by,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica and History.com.

The history of New Year’s resolutions dates back 8,000 years to ancient Babylonians, who would make promises to return borrowed objects and pay outstanding debts at the beginning of the new year, in mid-March when they planted their crops.

According to legend, if they kept their word, pagan gods would grant them favor in the coming year. If they broke the promise, they would fall out of God’s favor, according to a history of New Year’s resolutions compiled by North Hampton Community College New Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Many secular New Year’s resolutions focus on imagining new, improved versions of ourselves.

The failure rate of New Year’s resolutions is about 80 percent, according to U.S. News & World Report. There are myriad reasons, but a big one is they’re made out of remorse — for gaining weight, for example — and aren’t accompanied by a shift in attitude and a plan to meet the stress and discomfort of changing a habit or condition.

Harford Memorial Hospital will permanently close on Feb. 6 next year, UM Upper Chesapeake Health CEO Elizabeth Wise announced Tuesday night during a presentation at the Harford County Council meeting.

In its place, a medical center in Aberdeen will open the same day, as will a pavilion at the UM Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air that will have the same 72-bed capacity as Harford Memorial.

UM Upper Chesapeake Health has been preparing for years for the eventual closure of the hospital in Havre de Grace. Earlier this year, representatives said the hospital would be closed by spring 2024, but this is the first time an official date has been given.

Harford Memorial is one of only two hospitals in Harford County, and it serves residents in the northern part of the county as well as from neighboring Cecil County just across the Susquehanna River.

The hospital is also the designated treatment center for victims of sexual abuse and is the county’s primary stroke center. Both of those capabilities will move to the Aberdeen Medical Center.

With Harford Memorial’s closure, UM Upper Chesapeake Medical Center will become the only full-service hospital in the county.

UM Upper Chesapeake Health at Aberdeen will include the medical center, a Behaviorial Health Pavilion that will also open on Feb. 6, and a Health and Wellness Center that is already open.

The Health and Wellness Center offers primary care, endocrinology and diabetes care, wound care, cardiology, hematology and oncology, orthopedics and rehabilitation. Imaging and lab services will open in February.

The campus also will have a helipad to transport critical care patients by helicopter to the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Currently, the medevac has to land in a park a couple of blocks away from Harford Memorial Hospital.

The medical center will offer state-of-the-art technology that is not currently available at Harford Memorial. It will include a 130,000-square-foot emergency department and capability for short-term stays.

Residents and council members, however, have expressed concerns that there will be no intensive care unit, no inpatient surgical center and no inpatient beds at the Aberdeen campus. That level of care will only be available at the hospital in Bel Air.

The Aberdeen Medical Center will have capacity for short-term stays, but any patient that requires hospitalization beyond 48 hours will need to be transferred to a hospital, Wise said.

Also, several departments already have moved from the hospital in Havre de Grace, including obstetrics and gynecology.

While UM Upper Chesapeake Health is expanding its facilities by the addition of the Aberdeen campus, County Council members expressed their concern about emergency medical services for residents who live closer to Harford Memorial Hospital and the need for more medical facilities in a county with a growing population.

Although Wise said the health system will be providing a free shuttle bus from Havre de Grace to Aberdeen, District F council member Jacob Bennett is concerned about how residents in his district will get to the Aberdeen Medical Center, especially in an emergency. Bennett, who lives within walking distance of Harford Memorial, said residents living near the hospital often walk there for outpatient care while residents in the northern part of the county have just a short drive.

“February 6, I think, is a scary day for a lot of those people in my community,” Bennett said during the meeting. “It is a huge loss to our community to be able to walk to services.”

Bennett also asked Wise how UM Upper Chesapeake Health is communicating to the public about the hospital’s impending closure and advocated for a mailing campaign to residents in his district to inform them about the closure and the services available at the Aberdeen campus.

“I’m just concerned that someone is going to attempt to go to Harford Memorial in an emergency and they’re going to pull up to an empty building, not knowing that the hospital has been closed,” he said.

A logistics company plans to lay off 176 employees at a warehouse in Aberdeen, the second time the warehouse has seen mass layoffs in the past four years.

GXO Logistics Inc., one of the largest contract logistics providers in the world, is shutting down its operations at 610 Chelsea Road in Aberdeen. The closure and layoffs will take place on Sept. 30, according to a notification filed with Maryland’s Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification log. The layoffs come four years after XPO Logistics Inc. shut down its operations at the same facility and laid off 167 employees in 2019. GXO was spun off from XPO in 2021.

A GXO spokesperson said the Connecticut-based company still operates facilities in the Aberdeen area but did not respond to a request for its current employee count in Aberdeen.

"We’re ceasing operations at one of our sites in Aberdeen. For impacted employees, they will have the opportunity to transfer to other nearby GXO sites that serve other customers,” said the spokesperson.

The company operates out of a 571,000-square-foot warehouse on Chelsea Road. The warehouse, which opened in 2016 and was developed by Hanover-based Chesapeake Real Estate Group, is currently owned by an LLC affiliated with Cabot Properties, a company based out of Boston. The LLC purchased the facility in 2020 for more than $53 million.

GXO’s layoffs have not been limited to just Greater Baltimore. The company announced it would lay off 77 employees in the Atlanta area in June. GXO attributed the layoffs to the ceasing of operations with a customer in that area.

GXO operates in 28 countries, as of the end of 2022, and had approximately 135,000 employees worldwide, according to its proxy filing. The company said 26% of its employees, or about 35,000 people, were employed in North America. GXO operates 294 facilities in the United States, managing 78 million square feet. The U.S. is the company’s second-largest by revenue, accounting for $2.8 billion of the company’s $9 billion revenue in 2022. The company’s largest market by revenue is the United Kingdom, which accounts for $3.3 billion.

The company’s CEO said during its May earnings call that some of GXO’s customers include Google, Kellogg’s and Unilever.

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ABERDEEN, Md. — Fire officials are still investigating the cause of a two-alarm fire in the 4700 Block of Witchhazel Way in Aberdeen that destroyed multiple townhomes.

Originally, 18 people were displaced. WMAR-2 News was updated Monday and that number is now 26 people displaced after the townhomes caught fire, causing three of them to collapse.

RELATED: "It felt like a bomb like blew and shook our house"

Neighbors jumped into action as soon as they heard explosions, realizing it was coming from their own neighborhood.

"We all at about 10:45 heard a loud boom, most of us neighbors thought it was from APG (Aberdeen Proving Ground) but we all came outside and all we could see was houses on fire,” said Sheila Shipman, who lives in neighborhood.

Shipman said she and the neighbors worked together to make sure no one was left behind in the homes.

"Everyone ran out knocking on doors trying to tell people, fire, fire. It's the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Shipman.

Taking a look at the eight townhomes, it shows a devastating event-- some losing everything they own.

Shipman said,"Nobody was injured. Everyone got out. A lot of people on this side was out of town for the weekend so can you imagine when they got back yesterday, they just fell to the ground."

Master Deputy Fire Marshal, Oliver Alkire, said the fire started behind the homes in the middle and spread fast. Even causing heat damage to homes across the street.

"It was a very quick response by both of the local fire departments to the scene. They did the best they could but once fire reaches or breaches into the vinyl siding it rapidly spreads throughout the rest of the structure,” said Alkire.

It took two hours for nearly 70 firefighters to get the fire under control. But the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

"So right now we're looking at any possible accidental causes including is it an electrical issue. Is it possible that one of the vehicles that are back there. So our investigators are going to continue to comb through evidence,” said Alkire.

One firefighter was injured and Alkire said that firefighter has since been released from the hospital.

Those displaced were helped by Harford County Disaster Assistance and Red Cross. The neighborhood also came together to collect toiletries and essentials to help get the families back on their feet.

Multiple GoFundMe fundraisers were started for those affected by the fire.

Click below to donate:

- Hollywoods II Fire: https://www.gofundme.com/f/hollywoods-ii-fire [gofundme.com]- Sam & Chantill Morris: https://www.gofundme.com/f/sam-chantill-morris [gofundme.com]- Sam & Chantill Morris: https://www.gofundme.com/f/d7tkq-sam-chantill-morris [gofundme.com]- Fire Relief for the Wright Family: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xwh7p-victims-of-a-devastating-fire [gofundme.com]- Devastating fire family lost everything: https://www.gofundme.com/f/64mh5n-devastating-fire-family-lost-everything?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_content=undefined&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer&utm_term=undefined

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