Maryann Hiles, her daughter, Tabatha Hiles, 25, and her granddaughters, Jezabel, 7 and Lealah, 4, have been on an extended stay at the Holiday Inn Express, 203 N. Duffy Road, since the end of January.

It's not a vacation. They've got nowhere else to go since a second fire in nine days destroyed their home of more than 20 years at 285 Stone Church Road in Lancaster Township.

Maryann Hiles said the first fire on Jan. 19 was literally a rude awakening.

“It was in the middle of the night, around one o'clock. I started smelling smoke. The odor started getting worse,” she said. “I started seeing smoke.”

She added her husband, Tim Hiles, who was there that night (they have been separated and living apart) helped her, Tabatha and the two granddaughters to get out of the house safely.

“Everybody got out OK,” said Maryann Hiles, adding the fire was determined to have been an electrical fire in the wall.

“We had to move out while they redid the wiring and they were in the process of redoing the bathroom wall which had been damaged to get to the fire, as well as the walls in the mudroom.

“There was no electricity in the house. They were using the wood-burning stove for heat. The insurance company had an electrician come out. They were due to turn the electricity back on the day of the second fire,” she said.

She said the wood-burning stove was kept stoked to keep the house's pipes from freezing.

“The second fire broke out at 4 a.m. (Jan. 28). There was no one there at the time. I had three cats in the house; they were like my babies,” she said, adding the animals didn't survive the second fire which destroyed the single-story modular home.

Chief Neal Nanna of the Harmony Volunteer Fire Company at the time estimated the damage at $50,000.

But the fire wiped out more than property, according to Maryann Hiles.

“It destroyed years of memories,” she said.

“There was 20 some years of property in there. We didn't grab a whole lot because after the first fire we were going to be back in a week.”

Hiles said they have next to nothing, noting their clothing, bedding, dishes, and other property went up in flames in the second fire.

Tabatha Hiles said her daughters looked at the extended hotel stay as a vacation initially.

“They did at first, but after being here so long it's starting to wear on them,” she said.

“I'm all right, I don't spend too much time here. I'm usually at work.” Tabatha works at Fairground Market, 1138 New Castle Road, in its catering department.

Tom Taylor, the owner of Fairground Market, said of the family: “They really need help. I actually gave Tabatha one of my cars to drive when theirs broke down.”

They lived at a motel after the first fire but then moved to the Holiday Inn Express so Jezabel could go to Connoquenessing Valley Elementary School in Zelienople.

Their insurance, State Farm, is paying for their hotel stay, said Maryann Hiles, but it's not easy living in two rooms with a microwave and minifridge as the only appliances.

Maryann Hiles said even if the insurance money comes through “there's still years left on the mortgage of the old house.”

“We don't have any relatives. My parents are deceased, “ she said.

She has two other daughters, one in Butler and one in New Castle, but “there's no house big enough to take us in,” she said.

Tabatha Hiles said they are hoping to be able to rent a home soon near where their original home was to prevent her daughter's school schedule from being disrupted.