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Husband helps save wife from fire near Harveys Lake

Storms blew after one of the hottest days of the year and a couple woke up to find their home on fire. The husband sprung into action.

HARVEYS LAKE, Pa. — There's not much left of a home in a wooded area along Tulip Road near Harveys Lake.

Fire officials said the mobile home caught fire around 4:15 p.m. on Thursday.

The homeowner had just returned from a trip to Scranton and laid down for an afternoon nap with his wife.

"I was home maybe half an hour, and that storm hit, and everything happened," said Charlie, who's lived in Lake Township since the 1980s.

Strong winds knocked over a tree in the driveway, taking out an electrical line in the process.

"My wife said she heard something and when I opened the bedroom door, the heat and the smoke from the living room [and] all that big thick black smoke that you see in the fire, that hit me," Charlie said. "I dropped to the floor [and] crawled back through."

Charlie said he closed the door and knew he had to get his wife out.

As he smashed the bedroom window, a neighbor came running with a chainsaw.

"I knocked out a window," he said. "He got me a chainsaw. I cut a hole and got her out."

The woman was taken to the hospital to be checked out.

Firefighters from five departments worked in the heat to knock down the blaze.

The homeowner said he does not have insurance, and he and his wife will be staying with his daughter.

In the midst of the destruction, he still counts himself lucky.

"[It] could've been a lot worse," he said. "If I wouldn't have been home, my wife would've been dead. There's no doubt in my mind. She was not climbing out that window."

Fire officials said the cause of the fire is under investigation but that it could be weather related.

The Red Cross has been called in to assist the family.

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