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Flames Gut Home in Northumberland County

DELAWARE TOWNSHIP — Fire destroyed a building in Northumberland County Tuesday morning. It broke out around 10:30 a.m. in a home on Susquehanna Trail in D...

DELAWARE TOWNSHIP -- Fire destroyed a building in Northumberland County Tuesday morning.

It broke out around 10:30 a.m. in a home on Susquehanna Trail in Delaware Township, near Turbotville.

Strangers risked their lives trying to save a woman they thought was in her burning home in Northumberland County.

Seth Depasqua was on his way home after picking up football tickets he bought from someone online when by chance he ended up passing the house fire.

"I just seen the smoke, and I just ran up there. I didn't know what to think. I kind of just reacted, I guess," he said.

That fast reaction by Depasqua may have kept the owner of the home near Turbotville safe from danger.

"I could see the smoke probably two miles out," said Warrior Run Assistant Fire Chief David Brown.

Firefighters tell Newswatch 16 by the time they were called around 11 a.m., the back of the home was filled with flames.

Depasqua took video and watched from the side as crews used water from a nearby pond to put out flames. He tells us when he arrived, he found the homeowner -- a man in his 70s -- standing dangerously close to the fire.

He and another passerby helped the man to safety, but there was another concern -- the man's wife.

"We asked him if his wife was in there and he was disoriented and he said, 'Yeah, I don't know where she is at,'" Depasqua said.

With the fire raging, Depasqua pushed his way through the front door.

"It was horrible. You see it on television, and you don't think it's that bad. As soon as we went in there, we hit the floor, and we both went down to the floor, and we got the living room and we couldn't stand it. That's when we started choking," he recalled.

The smoke pushed the men back outside.

"We came out, and we tried to get ladders out to the windows and by the time we got to the windows, she was coming back across the street from the businesses across the street."

Depasqua says the woman who lives there had run across the street to get help. Her hair and eyebrows were singed, but she is OK.

"We were really relieved at that point that she was OK."

The couple did not want to talk on camera but did tell us they lived in the home for about 50 years. They are both OK and will be staying with friends.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

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