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Woman Flown to Hospital after Smoking in Bed Causes Fire

GREENFIELD TOWNSHIP — Firefighters say a woman was smoking in bed, igniting the flames that consumed her home in Lackawanna County. “I thought my ow...

GREENFIELD TOWNSHIP -- Firefighters say a woman was smoking in bed, igniting the flames that consumed her home in Lackawanna County.

"I thought my own home was on fire and then I stepped outside and right here, not 10 feet, not even two feet away from my own house the flames shooting up in the air."

That's how a neighbor described the blaze at a mobile home on Newton Lake in Greenfield Township early Friday morning.

There are charred belongings, ash, a hole where a wall once stood.

Fire officials said the blaze started when a woman smoking in bed ignited her oxygen tank.

A next-door-neighbor who did not want her face shown on camera says the woman inside the burning home could not move around well on her own.

Trapped in her bed, a man ran inside to rescue her.

"He came down here on his own two legs, he didn't even drive a car down here, he came running and he got her out of the house, he put her two doors down on the front lawn, and he kept calming her down and then he asked about was there anybody else in here. He was amazing, just amazing," said the neighbor.

Fire officials and a neighbor said the woman who lived in the house had a live-in caregiver, but that person just a stroke the other day and was not here at the time of the fire.

"It could have really been so much worse, really frightening."

The woman was burned and flown to a hospital in the Lehigh Valley for treatment.

"My thoughts and prayers for her, and you know it's an unfortunate accident for what it sounds like. I think it's a good lesson that you shouldn't be smoking while on oxygen," said another neighbor.

"It's such a small close-knit community that I'm kind of shocked that we didn't hear anything last night. I'm just glad she got out because we all walk, run, kids play here all the time to see this caution tape is kind of sad, it's sad," said Kristin Rude of Greenfield Township.

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