SAXONBURG, Pa. — A car burst into flames outside of a Butler County daycare on Friday afternoon.
Melanie Merten, who owns The Learning Village Daycare in Clinton Township, is grateful that everyone is safe.
“The office is replaceable; every single thing in it means nothing. The fact that everybody is safe, that’s all that really matters,” she said.
A parent was picking their child up from school when her car started smoking and suddenly burst into flames. Daycare director Emily Lutz and nine other teachers rushed to get 21 kids to safety as the fire spread to the office.
“All that was going through my head was making sure that everyone was out, accounted for and was safe,” Lutz said. “Everything else is what it is. We’re just so happy that everyone was ok. Everyone was safe.”
Lutz said she and her staff took quick action to help calm the kids.
“Everyone was taking off their jackets for the kids sitting on the cold, wet ground, snuggling the kids, playing songs on their phones, just anything they could do to reassure them that everything was going to be ok,” she said.
Lutz tells Channel 11 that good Samaritan and father, Adam Hartwig, was coming out of the learning village with his daughter when he saw the car starting to smoke. He then ran back inside, grabbed a fire extinguisher and started to put the fire out himself.
“Quite amazing,” Lutz said. “He stuck around for the entire thing. He alerted us about how bad the fire was at the time and, like I said, he did his best efforts to put the fire out on his own.”
The daycare is closed indefinitely because of the soot throughout the building.
“It still pains me to say that we can’t provide care for your kids this week,” Merten said. “I’m hoping each day we can open. It’s just going to depend on insurance and getting that cleaning team in here that can get the smoke smell out and get all of the soot off of everything.
With 87 kids and 7 classrooms, they are now focusing on cleanup and finding an alternate space for care.
Merten tells Channel 11 they’re grateful to parents for being so understanding as they are still waiting to find out when they can open up The Learning Village.
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