TOLEDO, Ohio — Linda Carter inspects the gaping hole and wreckage that was once her dining room.
She and her three sons have lived on Western Avenue for over 22 years, but after her neighbor's home exploded the night of Dec. 27, her home is now unlivable.
However, while she says seeing the damage is shocking, she's counting her blessings.
"I just thank God I'm alive and my three boys are alive," Linda said, sitting on a dining chair with rubble strewn across the table in front of her. "You can get this stuff again, I mean I can, but I can't get my three boys again or myself."
The night before, Linda and her son, Tatarian, were at home when around 7 p.m. they were rocked by an enormous explosion from the house next door.
"Well I thought it was a hurricane attacking the house and I jumped out of the bed. Fell out," Linda said. "It threw me, really, it threw me out the bed."
Linda tells me that as she lay on the floor collecting herself, she realized she could hear her son's screams the next room over. Tatarian's window faces the neighboring house, and he had been hit by the brunt of the explosion.
"All the glass was cutting me, and I was crawling, crawling out of my room for safety," Tatarian said. "Blood was everywhere in the hallway."
After the chaos had settled, Tatarian had to be rushed to the hospital. He had received multiple lacerations and pieces of broken glass had to be pulled out of his arms and feet.
Tatarian's brother Keishande, who wasn't home at the time of the explosion, says he was upset when he saw his injuries.
"Man, I was devastated. I was so devastated it hurt," Keishande said. "Like, I practically raised him. He's my baby brother."
Keishande says that his mom never purchased insurance for the house, and they can't afford to pay for repairs on their own.
Standing in front of his now ruined childhood home, he tells me he's not sure what comes next.
"It's just hard. It's hard," Keishande said. "I'm not sure what to do, where to go, or how to go about it. I'm just trying."
While the Carters' next steps are in the dark, there is still hope. Even sitting in the remains of her dining room, Linda tells me that she truly believes that her family's next chapter will be better than this one.
"I know that God is not going to let me go through more than I can handle anyways," Linda said. "So this is probably the worst thing I can handle."