House fire kills Amend man
GEORGES TWP. – Joe Wells knows he did everything he possibly could have to get inside his buddy’s burning house in Amend early Tuesday morning. But he still feels badly that he didn’t do more because his friend Joseph Verbus was trapped inside and died.
“He was just on the other side of the door – reaching for the door,” Wells said. “I was just feet away from him and I didn’t know he was on the other side. I knew them guys.”
Joseph, 32, and his brother Michael lived in 127 Bottom St., which is the house that they and their two other brothers grew up in, but Joe was home alone Tuesday and died in the 5 a.m. fire.
State police in Uniontown confirmed that Joseph was found at the doorway of his house. Police said the fire is under investigation and that autopsy results are pending.
Wells works as a Herald-Standard newspaper delivery truck driver, but was delivering newspapers on his daughter’s delivery route because she was sick Tuesday morning.
Wells said he had finished delivering papers on Bottom Street at 4:45 a.m., went on to another street and was on his way back to deliver on Amend Road, which is the main street through the tiny village and parallels Bottom Street, when he smelled smoke.
When he returned, the left side of the house was burning and smoke was billowing from the right side.
“I tried my damnedest to get in, but I couldn’t,” Wells said. “The fire was just too hot. I did what I could. I’m a big guy. If I could have gotten to that door to get that guy out I would have.”
Flames had already started burning through the front door, which is the only door on the house, and the smoke coming the broken windows was so thick that Wells couldn’t see inside when he got there.
He said heard something explode inside and he was banging on the side of the house and yelling, hoping that anyone inside would respond.
As he was on the front porch pushing chairs out of his way, the porch roof and an oil tank along the side of the house were also burning.
It was then, when a neighbor yelled for him to “get out of there.”
After firefighters arrived and doused the flames, Wells said he witnessed the sad sight of firemen carrying a body out of the house.
“He grew up there. He’s always been a good guy,” Wells said. “You’re at a house fire and you’re the first one there and they bring someone out. You feel bad because you feel didn’t do enough to get him out.”
The noise Wells made woke up Clark Fitzpatrick. He lives on Amend Road, but his back yard faces the Verbus home.
He looked outside and saw Wells at the door of a burning house. In the moments it took Fitzpatrick to get there, flames had burst through the roof and forced him and Wells away from the imperiled one-story sided home.
“It just went up all at once,” Fitzpatrick said.
Neighbors and police said Verbus was dropped off at his house at 4 or 4:30 a.m. and Wells discovered the fire around 5 a.m. Fayette County 9-1-1 was immediately contacted.
The house was fully engulfed when firefighters from Collier and several surrounding communities arrived, police said.
Fitzpatrick said he has known the Verbus family all his life and will fondly remember the victim. Joe and another one of his brothers tended bar at the Amend Gun Club, where Fitzpatrick was a member.
“The boys always treated you nice,” Fitzpatrick said. “They were never smart to you or anything like that.”
Sylvia Earley, who lives next door, said she wakes up early every morning, but didn’t see the fire until her brother-in-law called her after hearing about the fire on his scanner.
“All I saw was flames,” Earley said. “When you see those flames, everything just drains out of you.”
She said she and the Verbuses talked when they saw each other, but the brothers mostly kept to themselves.
Neighbors and friends recalled that another Verbus brother – Franklin Verbus – was found dead in Cheat Lake several years ago.
He was 29 years old when he was found in the lake in July 1997 two days after going there with friends.
In addition to his brother, Michael, Verbus is survived by his mother, Mary E. Morris Verbus and father, Frank Verbus Jr.; a sister, Elizabeth Rose Verbus Nypaver and her husband, Jerry of Uniontown; a brother, Jeffrey Verbus of Masontown; and his grandmother, Elsie Verbus of Amend.
Funeral arrangements are being handled by the Stephen E. Kezmarsky III Funeral Home in Uniontown.