Swatara Township, PA, Residents Say Screaming was Their Wakeup Call

Their wakeup call was screaming as flames erupted in the attached duplex next door.

It was just after 7 a.m. Tuesday when Shatara Johnson heard the screams. She was on the living room couch in her rented duplex on the 600 block of Second Street in the Bressler section of Swatara Township. She was just about to get her three kids ready for school.

But after hearing the cries to “get out of the house” coming from the street, Johnson was in a race to save the lives of her family. She had to evacuate her mother and three children, ages 4 to 13, from the home before the flames and smoke overtook the structure.

“I just heard the neighbors screaming, and I went out the front door. They was like, ‘call the fire department,’ and then I start screaming for everybody to get up and get out,” Johnson told PennLive while standing, wrapped in a blanket, in the freezing wind outside her smoldering home.

Johnson was able to get her family safely from the flames, but when she went back for her house cat, Callie, there was just too much smoke. It was billowing up from the floorboards, she said.

Jonathan Kibe, with Swatara Township Fire and Rescue, said all residents of the three homes engulfed by flames were able to evacuate safely. He said two firefighters responding to the two-alarm blaze suffered injuries and were treated at the scene.

Kibe said the cause of the fire remained undetermined, pending further investigation. But a neighbor whose house was spared from the flames by virtue of the wind direction said she was hearing a space heater was to blame.

Nadine McQuiston said what started as a normal morning became a nail-biting experience as she prayed for the stiff wind not to change. Otherwise, her home located just feet from the three structures that caught fire could have been next, she said.

“It was around 7:30 because I was just getting ready to start work. And I heard screaming. Someone was just screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming. And I was like, ‘what in the world?’ I ran downstairs. I went to my front door, and I saw smoke rolling out (from next door),” she told PennLive.

McQuiston wasn’t taking any chances. She ran back inside, grabbed her purse and two dogs and fled the home. She watched firefighters battle the flames from her backyard, occasionally taking refuge from the freezing wind inside the garage.

“Luckily the wind was blowing the other way,” McQuiston said.

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