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Laura Stronczek left for work early Tuesday from her home on Merivale Street, heading south on Rolston Street through what she first thought was a dense fog.
But about 6:40 a.m., as she passed through the “fog” near the 3500 block of Rolston, a smell hit her and she knew it was smoke. In the next few minutes, she and another neighbor would team up to get two senior citizens out of a burning house.
Stronczek first called 911 to report the house fire and then called the Frankes, her neighbors who live across the street.
Ben Franke’s younger sister woke him to tell him Stronczek was calling and the neighbor’s house was on fire. He looked out the window, saw the smoke, threw on some shoes at the door and ran outside.
As he headed out the door, he saw Stronczek running over to 3539 Rolston St. and followed. He knew an older couple he identified as Dean and Eleanor lived in the home. He had often helped with yardwork in the past, he said.
While Stronczek pounded on the front door of the burning home calling out to the couple, 19-year-old Franke went to the side, banging on the windows.
Then he heard the man, Dean, call out and helped him open a window.
“I asked ‘Where is your wife, Dean?’ ” Franke said. “He said, ‘She’s right here’ and I reached in and pulled her out.”
Dean tried to go back for the couple’s dog, but Franke grabbed his shirt and pulled him through the window, he said.
By the time the Fort Wayne Fire Department arrived at 6:45 a.m., the couple was out of the house and crews began to extinguish the fire in the one-story home, Capt. Matt Brokaw said.
Firefighters rescued the couple’s dog and began to fight the fire from inside the house, getting the blaze under control by 8:11 a.m., Brokaw said.
Outside the small home, in the quiet neighborhood tucked between Crescent Avenue and Coliseum Boulevard East, a pile of scorched furniture and debris sat in a pile Tuesday afternoon.
Many of the windows were boarded up and a large section of the roof was missing – the skeleton of boards blackened and exposed.
The couple was taken to a hospital for observation, Brokaw said.
Franke and his mother, Karen Franke, saw the couple at the hospital later Tuesday and said both were physically fine and later released. The fire department did not release the couple’s names.
“They have lived in that house for a long time, and now they have lost everything,” Karen Franke said.
And neighbors plan to take action again, she said.
The neighborhood association is planning a special meeting “to find out what we can do to help their situation,” she said.
In the meantime, the couple is being helped by the American Red Cross.
Both Stronczek and Franke humbly downplayed their role in rescuing the couple from the burning home and said they were just glad the couple and their dog made it out safe.
“It was my good deed for the day,” Franke said. “I think anyone would do it.”
mhubartt@jg.net
