Jan. 01--WEYMOUTH TOWNSHIP -- State Police were searching for the cause of a Tuesday morning fire that killed a man and a woman in a mobile home.
A passer-by on Cape May Avenue reported the fire at 6:48 a.m., Dorothy Volunteer Fire Company Chief Robert Gibney said.
When responders arrived, they found a person who lived in an adjacent home had pulled a man out of the mobile home, and they gave him cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Gibney said the Dorothy Emergency Medical Service transported the man to the Inspira Medical Center in Vineland, where he was pronounced dead.
State Police said he was about 50 years old.
Rescuers were unable to enter or save an adult woman left inside the mobile home, Gibney said. "There was no way we could get in there," he said.
The fire destroyed the mobile home, melting part of the metal structure and leaving it roofless.
"The trailer is totally destroyed," Gibney said. "There's nothing left."
State Police and fire crews would not identify the people who died, saying that their next of kin still needed to be contacted. Gibney said he did not know the relationship between the people in the mobile home and the people in the house.
About a dozen emergency responders were at the scene of the fire this morning. The mobile home was located on the back of the property, behind a farmhouse and utility building. There appeared to be the remnants of at least two other structures on the property.
The mobile home did not appear to be connected to either electric or water utility lines.
The property is in a rural corner of western Atlantic County, near the border of Weymouth Township and Estell Manor and about a mile east of the Tuckahoe River.
Lee Craver, 33, was walking his dog when he heard the sirens and helicopters.
"I thought it was a forest fire because they always happen out here."
The fire remained under investigation.
Copyright 2014 - The Press of Atlantic City, Pleasantville, N.J.
