The video shows tables and chairs spilling out from the structure moments before the roof collapses, sliding down the embankment below it and onto the rocky bank of the brook, which had swelled up during the storm. Homeowner Randi Marcucio and her son, 3, managed to escape the tragedy.

‘The river started to take the massive, tall, tall, tall deck pillars’

“You just fall to the ground. There goes everything,” Marcucio told New York Post.

Marcucio is a single mom and ER nurse. She had lived in the Oxford home for two-and-a-half years. She bought the house on Mother’s Day in 2022. The beautiful narrow Fivemile Brook running along the property enchanted her.

Marcucio was preparing to cook dinner last week when the storm caused the brook to surge. The flooding became monstrous, turning the street into a river and washing away chunks of the dirt hill where the home rested. “The river started to take the massive, tall, tall, tall deck pillars,” Marcucio said.

“The deck started to go. The deck went. The oil tank detached from the house. Over hours, slowly but surely, everything just started to go. The basement started to go. The basement went. A lot of the basement went. And then the second story was just kind of hanging,” she added.

On Monday, August 19, the home collapsed. However, Marcucio was away at the time, helping neighbours find shelter during the storm. She later slept at her parent’s home.

It was a neighbour who heard cracking and ran to Marcucio’s house, only to discover that it was gone. Marcucio said she would not be able to recuperate her losses. The damage is not covered as she did not have flood insurance.

Marcucio, however, is maintaining a positive attitude, and finds strength in the love of her son. “He’s incredible. He’s such a smart, happy kid, and he knows something’s wrong, but he’s happy to see mommy,” Marcucio said.

“He doesn’t even really know what’s happening. He just knows that people keep showing up for him … He’s seen me at different homes, he’s seen me soaking wet. He’s seen me crying in the last day so he’s happy that mommy’s here, and now he gets to show mommy the things his ‘friends’ — strangers — have come to him with,” she added, referring to donations made by her neighbours and the money raised in a GoFundMe.

“Oh, my God. It’s incredible. You want to die in one breath and then the next breath you’re like, ‘This is everything. This is life,” Marcuico said.

She added, “I didn’t lose my life. My son didn’t lose his life. We lost our stuff. Two women lost their lives. How can I even begin to complain about anything?”

The storm was so destructive that two women were killed about five miles north of Marcucio’s property. One of them was swept away while walking down the street.