June 08--Fire ripped through two units of a townhouse in East Stroudsburg Friday night, leaving as many as seven families homeless. No one was injured.
Crews worked into the night to quell the flames which neighbors say started in a shed behind 1102 Spring Lane sometime around 6:30 p.m.
Glenn Singer, the resident of the unit, along with his wife, Joan, said he heard two loud booms coming from the area of the home's furnace.
"The booms shut off the power. We got out," Singer said.
Singer and his neighbors stood outside under a torrential downpour as firefighters from East Stroudsburg's Acme Hose Co. sprayed water into the flames.
Smoke billowed out as onlookers piled up. Residents who lived in the seven units looked on in shock.
"I had just left," said Michelle Nazario, 40. "Within 10 minutes my daughter grabbed my grandson and said the house was on fire."
Nazario called her husband who was working in New York to break the terrible news to him.
The family lives two units down in 1104, which was saved from the flames but suffered smoke damage.
Authorities had already informed her that she wouldn't be able to return to her home Friday night.
"I just don't know if we're going to be able to move back in. I'm just glad we're safe," Nazario said.
A total of four units in a row of seven were damaged by the blaze, according to Corporal Ken Nevil of the Stroud Area Regional Police.
"It appears all seven of them are going to be inhabitable," Nevil said.
Ray Milewski, who lives in 1101, was washing his windows when he heard a furnace pop and began to see smoke pour from his neighbor's shed.
"Eventually you saw flames in their place and then it spread to my place."
Firefighters had to rip out the rear walls of two of the units.
Nazario, who said she would be staying with relatives, had been living in her residence for less than a year. "I don't know if we're going to be able to live here at all," she said standing in the rain. "This is a really nice community."
Fire and emergency units from East Stroudsburg, Stroudsburg and a Pocono Township rapid intervention team responded to the fire at the Madison Parktowne Townhomes community.
Copyright 2013 - Pocono Record, Stroudsburg, Pa.
