In his time as fire chief in Mt. Holly Springs, Tim Yingst cannot remember another time when his crew has had a hard time responding to a fire call.
However, it took the crew from Citizens Fire Company almost half an hour to get to a burning home on Whisky Springs Road, in the southernmost part of South Middleton Township, Sunday morning.
And by the time they got there, the home was already a complete loss.
The crew tried to take Petersburg Road to the home, but Yingst said it was completely blocked by fallen trees and electrical wires.
Other responding crews, coming from Carlisle, New Kingstown, North Middleton Township and Monroe Township, found the same problem.
Yingst's crew finally got to the home using Red Tank Road, the only road that was open at the time.
The fire chief said the road was like a maze for the tanker, curving around the mountain and with low limbs hanging everywhere from Saturday's wet and heavy snow.
"We had to stop four times and cut trees along the way," Yingst said.
Vital minutes
The crew arrived at the home at 6:47 a.m., 23 minutes after the initial 6:24 a.m. call from the homeowners.
In those 23 minutes, the fire spread from a furnace in the basement through the first and second floors and up to the attic.
"It got so much of a head start on us," Yingst said of the fire. "Usually we try to get to a fire within five to seven minutes."
Everyone safe
The couple in the home escaped safely and rescued their pets before the fire got out of hand.
By the time the fire crews got there, the blaze was so dangerous that it was not safe to send firefighters into the home. Instead, Yingst said, they fought the fire completely from the outside and only left the scene just before 1 p.m.
The fire destroyed the home, with large portions of the home and roof collapsing. The flames also reached a vehicle and a large camper beside the home, both of which also were destroyed.
Source
Since the power in that area had been out since around noon Saturday, Yingst said, it was easy to determine that the generator-powered furnace in the basement ignited the fire.
"It was running all night and ran out of fuel," Yingst said.
The man living in the home went down and added more fuel to the generator around 5:30 a.m. Soon after, he started smelling the beginnings of the fire.
"It was something in the furnace," Yingst said. "But that area all collapsed in on itself, so it's too dangerous to get in and investigate."
The family was placed in one of the fire trucks to keep them warm and was then assisted by the American Red Cross.
The couple has two daughters, neither of whom was home. The older daughter is away at college, while the younger one was at a sleepover, Yingst said.
The fire chief said that the only reason this fire got to be so bad was because of the difficulty crews encountered in crews responding. He noted that the area got 15 inches of snow Saturday, much more than landed in Carlisle.
"There were a lot more trees down and a lot more snow hanging on trees," he said. "I've never, never had this much trouble getting to a fire."
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
