JIM MURDOCH
WNEP
Reprinted with Permission

Neighbors rushed to action Wednesday afternoon to save a man from his burning home in Luzerne County.


Firefighters were called to the home on South Prospect Street in Nanticoke just before noon and when they arrived, they found smoke and flames coming out of the windows.

It could have easily had a different ending, but thanks to the quick help of neighbors, the man trapped on the second floor was rescued before firefighters arrived and lived to tell his story.

"I am so grateful," said Bill Meixsell shortly after he was rescued. He said he knew he was in trouble when the smoke alarms started going off in the house. "Fire started downstairs, I was upstairs. I tried to get down the stairs, no way I could get down the stairs. I pushed the window out and climbed on the roof."

That's when several neighbors, including Kenneth DiGuilio came to his rescue with this ladder. "There was all ice on the roof. He had no shoes on, no shirt. I had to get him off the roof somehow," DiGuilio said.

Meixsell said if neighbors hadn't arrived with the ladder his only other option was to jump off the roof onto the sidewalk, about a 15 foot drop.

"I didn't see any flames. I felt the heat and the smoke and that was it," Meixsell added. The heat so intense it actually singed his eyebrows. He says that was his only injury.

Meixsell lived in the house with his mother and his brother. They weren't home at the time of the blaze. Fire officials said the home was badly damaged.

The American Red Cross is helping out all three victims.

There is no word yet what sparked that fire.