2 Residents Hurt

REPRINTED COURTESY OF THE SENTINEL

By Tatiana Zarnowski, Sentinel Reporter, August 11, 2006

A couple who just moved into a Carlisle home will be looking for a new place to live after their rented house burned early this morning.

The Cape Cod-style home at 47 H Street sustained "moderate to severe damage" in the 3:24 a.m. fire, said John Bruetsch, public information officer for Cumberland County. The upstairs sustained "slight smoke damage."

The blaze appeared to have started in the front of the home.

The man and woman, whose names the county would not release, were treated and released from Carlisle Regional Medical Center, one with smoke inhalation and the other with minor burns.

A state police fire marshal and the Dauphin County District Attorney’s office investigated the scene this morning with an accelerant-sniffing dog. Samples from the fire will be analyzed, Bruetsch said.

He would not say whether the fire is considered suspicious, characterizing it as "undetermined, under investigation."

The couple had just rented and moved into the home about a week and a half ago, he said, adding that smoke detectors in the home were working.

Next-door neighbor Nancy Cochran just met the new neighbors last weekend. "Something woke me up and I don’t even know what it was," she said this morning.

"I looked out my window, and it was just bright, and it was hot." She called 911, but was so flustered she couldn’t get her phone to work at first.

She reported the fire, woke her four children and ushered them and her husband outside.

Her four young sons were "petrified," she said. "We were out before they got out," she said of the couple, who she called Joyce and Kirk. "I heard them running across the street, coughing."

"Joyce’s grandson was supposed to move in," but hadn’t yet, Cochran said. Through a broken upstairs window, the multicolored frame of a child’s bed was clearly visible.

Even the front lawn was charred, and a front porch appeared to be totally gone.