NY Volunteer Firefighter Dies in Home Explosion

A firefighter who volunteered for a small New York department north of Poughkeepsie died this week when his home was leveled by an explosion.

According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, Pine Plains volunteer firefighter Larry Pariseau, 61, was killed and an unidentified 62-year-old woman was injured in an explosion at the house he owned on Wednesday night.

Brian Walsh, the chief of the Pine Plains Fire Company, said Pariseau had been volunteering with the department for the last two years.

"Upon arrival the house was fully engulfed in flames and was completely apart," Walsh told the Poughkeepsie Journal. "The roof was laying on top of it."

Firefighters from nine departments across Dutchess and Columbia counties responded to the incident, which was called in at about 7:34 p.m. after the explosion was heard even miles away.

"It was a serious boom," Ted Howley, who lives a few miles away and felt and heard the explosion, told the Journal. "It was something."

A neighbor reportedly saw a woman's arm sticking out from the debris and assisted an arriving firefighter in digging her out from the rubble. She was transported to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Fire crews said they could smell gas when they arrived at the scene, but the cause of the fire has not yet been determined.