An East Deer couple and four children narrowly escaped a roaring, natural gas-fueled blaze that started Friday morning when a pickup crashed into a gas meter in front of their home.
Aaron Wood and fiancée Andrea Small got the children, ages 4 to 8, to safety by smashing out a rear window and handing the two girls and two boys to a neighbor.
They then managed to escape through a back door before fire engulfed the Freeport Road home. It was quickly reduced to charred framework and rubble.
“We’ve lost everything. I was so scared,” Small said, softly sobbing while sitting on a retaining wall off the alley behind the blaze.
The fire was reported around 11:30 a.m., according to emergency dispatchers.
Wood and Small said they heard a loud crash and the whoosh of the gas line erupting into flames under the crashed pickup in front of their home at 405 Freeport Road.
Officials said the truck smashed into the gas meter and line, rupturing it.
A fountain of flames shot into the house and quickly devoured the pickup, burning the metal frame and melting its glass.
“I looked out and saw fire on the front porch, and we ran to get the kids,” Small said. “We couldn’t get the back door open, so Aaron broke out a window and we handed over the kids” to neighbor Annabelle Baer.
After getting the children to safety, Wood said he was able to find the right key and opened the “almost never-used” back door.
“We ran out just in time,” he said. “It caught fire in seconds.”
Thick, brownish-black smoke could be seen throughout the neighborhood and from across the Allegheny River in New Kensington.
While no one was injured in the blaze, a cat is believed to have died inside the home of Wood and Small.
The two adjacent homes that were damaged by fire were vacant.
New Kensington fire Chief Ed Saliba Jr. told firefighters not to extinguish the burning gas line until an employee of Peoples Natural Gas could turn off gas to the line. Saliba didn’t want fire to race back into the gas line and cause an explosion.
East Deer police Patrolman Bryan Borghi said the crash apparently was caused when a wheel came off the white, extended-cab pickup.
The truck then smashed into two parked cars, a small Ford and Toyota, before careening into the gas meter and line.
Johnna Wano and her young daughter, Olive, were in their house two doors down.
“I heard a real loud boom, and I looked outside and the wires were shaking and my car was totaled into the telephone pole. His truck caught my friends’ house on fire and it blew up,” Wano said, referring to Wood and Small.
As firefighters battled the blaze, neighbors and rescue crews supplied cookies and toys for the children.
Raymond Bish said he and a relative had recently moved out of the now-vacant house he owns to the left of the one that was destroyed.
Former East Deer Commissioner Joe Moxie said he owns several of the houses on the block, including the fire-damaged house on the other side of the one that was destroyed.
“We were remodeling,” he said.
Police said they knew the identity and location of the pickup’s driver, but they didn’t identify the driver Friday or say whether the person would face charges.
Police and the Allegheny County Fire Marshal’s Office are investigating.
Comcast service knocked out
The fire also burned through Comcast service lines.
Comcast workers were granted access to their lines around 5 p.m., according to Comcast spokesman Bob Grove, who could not say how widespread the outage was.
Businesses and residents from the New Kensington and Springdale areas posted to Facebook throughout the afternoon, commenting on the lack of Comcast service. Lower Burrell customers also were affected.
Peoples Gas spokeswoman Jackie Ziemianski said the company’s crews responded immediately and turned off the gas.
She said the location of the meter at the front of the house, separated from passing traffic by a sidewalk and room for cars to park along the curb, is “standard practice.”
“The meter needs to be set right where the gas line is coming in from the street,” she said. “That’s the standard practice for everyone.”
Ziemianski said state regulators do not require natural gas utilities to place any shielding or barriers in front of natural gas meters.
Dave Hixson, a spokesman for the state Public Utility Commission, said the PUC is investigating.
Staff writer Brian C. Rittmeyer contributed to this report.
Chuck Biedka is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Chuck at 724-226-4711, [email protected] or via Twitter .
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