Greene County house fire kills mother, six children
FRANKLIN TWP. – A small pile of stuffed animals and a few flowers were laid on a frozen driveway early Saturday afternoon, a few feet from the charred remnants of a Greene County home where an overnight fire took the lives of a woman and six children. The fire, which started around 3 a.m., engulfed the 1 1/2-story wood Valley Farm Drive home owned by Steve and Rebecca Eddy just outside Waynesburg in Franklin Township.
The flames, which neighbors say shot 20 feet into the air, quickly spread through the house, where the Eddys lived with several relatives.
According to state police, Rebecca Eddy, 26, and her three daughters Tiffany Blake, 10, Rebecca Blake, 9, and Diamond Blake, 7, were killed in the blaze. Also killed were three of Eddy’s nieces and nephews: Donna Jo Arthur, 5, Josh Arthur Jr., 3, and Christopher Arthur, 2.
There were five adults and the six children inside the house at the time of the fire, which relatives say might have started in the children’s bedrooms. Steve Eddy, Josh Arthur, Lucille Treat and Robert Husner managed to escape the fire, police said.
Josh Arthur, Steve Eddy’s brother and father of three of the children killed in the fire, suffered severe burns attempting to get the children out of the house and remains in serious condition at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh. He was staying at the house and his three children were visiting for the weekend.
Also injured in the blaze was Shawn Arthur, the brother of Josh Arthur and Steve Eddy, who lives in a trailer on the property.
The body of Rebecca Eddy, the only adult not to escape the fire, was found in the bathroom with one of the children. The three Arthur children were found in the living room and the other two children were in an adjacent bedroom.
Only one smoke detector was in the house, but was not working, relatives said.
State Police Trooper Brian Burden said crews had difficulty removing bodies from the house because a damaged portion of the roof posed a hazard. Fire Marshall Sean Jones is investigating, Burden said.
Scott Shriver, 33, of Waynesburg, one of several family members that gathered Saturday at Shawn and Tammy Arthur’s trailer that sits only a few feet from the Eddy home, served as a spokesman for the family.
He said Josh Arthur was the first to notice the fire and started “screaming and yelling,” to wake the others. Josh woke up Robert Husner, Rebecca Eddy’s brother, and then ran across the snowy, frozen yard to wake his brother, Shawn Arthur, and use his phone to call 911, Shriver said; the Eddy home did not have a phone.
“As far as I know, then Robert got up and kicked the [bedroom] door in where the kids where and it was engulfed in flames,” Shriver said. “He ran up, woke up Steve and Becky, kicked their door in. Then I guess things got kind of confusing and he went running down the hallway and Becky was behind him, as far as he knew.”
But Rebecca Eddy was not behind him. Shriver said the family believes she heard the kids crying and went back, only to perish trying to rescue them.
Outside, Shawn and Josh, who were then joined by Steve, were attempting to get inside the house, but there the flames were too high and there was too much smoke, Shriver said. At one point they threw one of the children’s bikes through the bedroom window, but were unable to get inside.
“By that time there was no way to go in,” Shriver said.
Around 3:30 a.m., Mike Vukmanic, who lives next door to the Eddy home with his mother, Crystal Bihun, and Tony Simonetti, saw the blaze from his bedroom window.
While Vukmanic called 911, Simonetti threw on his boots and ran next door to see if he could help.
“When I got there the father [Steve Eddy] was in back yard,” Simonetti said. “He’s like in shock, and I said ‘everybody got out, right?’ And he looked at me and said ‘everybody’s right there where the flames are.’ And I started to try to go in [the kitchen] door – I didn’t know the layout of the house- and it was just like looking into hell, just dark, black smoke… I was gonna run over there and just go in, but there was nowhere to go in. I just didn’t know what to do.”
Soon after, firefighters arrived but were unable to enter the house, Simonetti said.
As they watched from a few yards away, the fire took only a few minutes to spread through the house, Vukmanic said.
“When I called [911] at quarter after three, the house wasn’t really engulfed in flames. The door was open and I could see maybe the carpet was on fire or something inside was on fire,” he said. “And then, a few minutes later, I looked back out and it was – flames were just everywhere.”
“Flames were coming out this whole entire side of the house, like 20 feet in the air,” Christina Simonetti said.
Waynesburg-Franklin Township Volunteer Fire Company Chief Larry Marshall said the fire department was called to the scene at 3:19 a.m. and when they arrived it was evident that the house had been ablaze for a while.
“We could see the fire when coming up by the Sheetz store [less than a mile away], and the sky was a bright orange color,” he said. “When we got there, there were flames coming out of every window of the house.”
Firefighters assisted at the scene into late morning, and were expected to return later in the day. No firefighters were injured while battling the fire, Marshall said, and even though it was only two degrees when the fire company began battling the blaze, they experienced little problems due to the cold weather.
The fire was extinguished in about 30 minutes, Marhsall said, but not in time to save Eddy or the children.
“I don’t think there was anything anyone could’ve done. It was pretty bad,” said neighbor Jodee Efaw, 26, who lives across the street from the Eddy home.
She didn’t find out about the fire until well after the fire crews had doused the blaze because of the noise from the highway traffic from nearby Interstate 79. Since her bedroom is in the part of her house closest to the highway, she didn’t even know what had happened until 6:30 Saturday morning.
“At first, I just thought maybe it wasn’t so bad and they were all over at [Shawn Arthur’s trailer],” Efaw said. “That’s when we found out that they didn’t make it.”
Marshall said volunteers from the local Salvation Army were also on site to assist victims, police and firefighters with blankets and hot beverages.
Two of Steve and Rebecca Eddy’s children, Austin Michael Eddy, 5, and Amber Dawn Eddy, 4, were not home at the time of the blaze. Both were staying at a grandparent’s house.
No cause for the fire has been determined and state police fire marshals are investigating.
Relatives said Saturday that the family did not have gas service and had been relying on a fireplace and several space heaters for warmth. Multiple heating sources were found throughout the house, but officials had not determined if they had caused the fire, state police said.
Anyone wishing to contact the family about donations can call Donna Arthur at (724)998-1685.
(Steve Barrett, editor of the Greene County Messenger, contributed to this report.)