An older couple and their adult son, who escaped a house fire and a series of explosions, were out of the hospital by Friday morning, according to friends.<\/p>\n
A fundraiser for Rita and Fred, and their son Bobby is in the works after a blast Thursday destroyed their home on Sensentine Road in Clinton Twp.<\/p>\n
Dance studio owner Dave Ragnacci used Facebook to announce a meeting Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at his Scranton studio, 1212-14 South Main Ave., to make fundraiser plans. Ragnacci declined to comment. But on Facebook, he wrote that Rita is a longtime member of his dance studio and that \u201cthese two people have a heart of gold and are always giving, giving, giving!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time to give back. Anyone who would like to help with this event in any way please come to the meeting. The event will be a night of food, fun, entertainment and prizes. Your help and input is needed,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Neighbor Kimberly Christman said she comforted Rita at the scene a block off the shores of the 158-acre Elk Lake in the western part of Wayne County.\u00a0She said her neighbor seemed \u201chorrified\u201d and in shock.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was just holding on to me, and she couldn\u2019t even walk to get over\u201d to a waiting vehicle,\u201d Christman said.\u00a0Rita was deeply worried about her animals. Christman believes a dog survived, but the status of multiple birds and cats remains unknown.<\/p>\n
Christman and her husband watched the scene unfold from their kitchen window. She believes she heard three blasts followed by other, smaller noises.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty harrowing,\u201d Christman said. \u201cWe\u2019re all pretty shook up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fire officials Thursday blamed a leaking propane tank.<\/p>\n
According to state police, an 84-year-old woman was in the kitchen when an initial blast partially collapsed the structure around 10 a.m. Thursday. Blocked by debris, she yelled for her 63-year-old son upstairs to climb out a window, forcing him to jump from the roof to safety.<\/p>\n
Fire crews from throughout a three-county area responded and battled the flames for several hours in temperatures that reached nearly 90 degrees.<\/p>\n
Videos posted by residents of the lake show thick, black smoke billowing high into the sky following the initial explosion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An older couple and their adult son, who escaped a house fire and a series of explosions, were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,182,139,28,178,180,179,181,1481],"class_list":["post-218104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt","tag-wayne-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}