Fire destroys mobile home
Raymond Newell walked away from the breakfast he was cooking for just a few minutes Thursday morning, but it was long enough for a fire to get started and quickly engulf his trailer. He escaped without injury and was thankful his wife and baby daughter, who turns 2 in January, were not home like they normally would have been. The trailer was in the North Union Township village of Phillips, just off Route 51.
“I was cooking myself breakfast and left the room and went back and the hall was filled with smoke,” Newell said. “In three or four minutes it filled with smoke.”
Firefighters from West Leisenring, Hopwood and North Union Township extinguished the fire and quickly prevented it from spreading to adjoining trailers, but the Newells’ trailer at 17 Phillips Manor Road was destroyed.
A state police fire marshal was also at the scene helping West Leisenring Assistant Fire Chief Steve Vojacek pinpoint the cause of the fire, which started shortly after 9 a.m.
“Everything I had was in there. I mean everything,” Newell said.
Next-door neighbor John Gillen said, “It sounded like gunshots going off – boom, boom, boom, boom. Then a neighbor came running by and said a house is on fire.”
He said he got close enough to see the kitchen filled with flames and then alerted the neighbors who live closest to burning trailer.
“As close as they are, if one or two catch (fire), they all catch,” Gillen said. I feel bad for the guy. He’s got a wife and baby. Homeless right before Christmas, that’s not a good Christmas present.”
Newell said the only property not destroyed in the fire were a few tools his father-in-law was using. He said he has insurance.