AMBRIDGE, Pa. — Two teachers are credited with saving a family from their burning home.
The teachers were walking the picket lines near Ambridge High School on Duss Avenue when several of them noticed a cloud of smoke rising in the sky about a block awake.
Karen DeMarco put down her strike poster, ran to the home and started pounding on the front door.
“I just see her spring across the road, almost get hit by a car,” said teacher Jeff Morovich, who was also on the picket line. “Then I see a resident coming down 8th Street yelling, ‘Call 911.’”
The teachers didn’t wait for firefighters to arrive. They knocked down a door and went into the home.
“We found the lady of the house sitting in the one room, and there was several oxygen tanks there,” DeMarco said. “We felt that we needed to get her out with the oxygen tanks. There was a daughter there and a grandfather there.”
Two other teachers carried out the oxygen tanks before they had a chance to explode.
When firefighters arrived, flames were coming from the roof, but three people who lived in the home were safe.
Because power lines were in the way of ladder trucks, Duquesne Light was called to shut off power to the area. About 50 homes were affected. A warming center was set up at the Ambridge Fire Station, but the borough manager told
that nobody used the shelter.
When things settled down, DeMarco said she recognized one of the people she helped to save.
“Kayla’s a former student of mine, and I just felt that I had to do something to get that family out,” she said. “I’d do that for anybody. I just wanted to see them safe for the holiday season.”
The cause of the fire was not known. The house is a total loss.