8-year-old with spina bifida saves family from fire that destroyed home

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A Clayton County family is crediting one of the children for saving everyone from the  house fire that destroyed their home.

Eight-year-old Tamesha Brittenum, born with spina bifida, screamed at 3 a.m. when the house started to fill with smoke and woke her parents.

“God woke me up, and then I woke my daddy up,” Tamesha said.

“If we wouldn’t have got out exactly when we got out, we wouldn’t have made it out,”  Teric Brittenum, 15, said.

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The family escaped with their lives but not the equipment that kept Tiffany Brittenum and her husband employed.

“We lost everything,” Brittenum said.

“To see my father -- his equipment’s gone, my mom’s equipemtn is gone. It’s been horrible,” Teric said.

Tiffany Brittenum told Channel 2’s Matt Johnson their home has been deemed unsafe to live in for the family of eight and everything change after the family moved into a hotel.

“We were a successful family making it, working. My husband is a painter, and now we're begging,” Brittenum said.

She never thought she’d have to feed her six children with donated canned food inside of plastic bowls.

“We can’t afford to wash at the laundromat so we're using this 99-cent dish liquid to wash clothes in a tub to make sure the kids go to school clean,” Brittenum said.

One item the family keeps out in the open is the Bible.

They say their faith kept them alive and it will keep them afloat.

“We do think that God allowed this fire to happen for a reason and maybe everything we lost we're going to get it back more abundantly,” Brittenum said.