For some, Saturday, Aug. 20 in Harford County was as horrible of a day as it gets.
There was a terrible loss of life in a horrific crash in the median of Route 24 alongside Harford Mall that killed a 47-year-old mother and her 4-year-old daughter.
It's the kind of tragedy that, whether they knew the deceased or not, hits many people very, very hard. A mom and two of her kids are out and about on a sunny, summer afternoon when the vehicle she's driving veers to the left, jumps the curb that outlines the median, strikes a tree and bursts into flames.
The 16-year-old son escaped before the fireball engulfed the vehicle. The other two in the vehicle did not. As the black smoke rose from the midst of the Bel Air shopping district on a Saturday, those in sight of the plume knew whatever had just happened was bad.
That's when folks started taking inventory of their loved ones, trying to make sure they couldn't have been involved. Then human curiosity started taking over and folks wondered if it was someone they knew.
If it those in the crash didn't happen to be someone they knew, they certainly were just like someone that just about everyone knows. Everyone, especially those in Harford County, is related to or knows moms in their 40s with young children.
That's part of why so many in Harford County have come together in the wake of this crash. One of our online readers posed a question about why does it take something terrible to happen for Harford County to rally together? That's another part of human nature. It's impossible for many of us not to do something in the aftermath of such a terrible event.
But what is there to do? If you're not family or a friend, there's little to be done when someone passes tragically. That's where fundraising or cooking meals or other acts of kindness come in.
Since there's nothing we can do about something bad that's happened, at least we can address our shared grief and sadness with a small, random act of kindness.
Harford County has a great history of coming together in the face of really bad things. We're grateful and very proud about that part of our community.