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Beaver County blaze kills 2
Monday, June 12, 2000 By Mike Bucsko, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A Beaver County teen-ager yesterday alertly escaped a smoky trailer home and helped rescue his buddy with another friend, but he was too late to save his buddy's parents.
By the time Nye ran to the front of the trailer home, another teen-ager, Louis Husing, had awakened and escaped through the front door. Husing, 18, was asleep in a recliner in the living room when he also heard the smoke detector, Phillips said.
The two teens ran back into the burning trailer, grabbed Michael Clyde from his sleeping spot on the living room couch, and pulled him outside. Clyde, 17, suffered severe burns on the upper part of his body.
After Clyde was safely outside, the trailer was so engulfed in flames, however, that Nye and Husing did not chance another trip inside to find Clyde's parents, Gregg and Tina, who were asleep in a bedroom at the south end of the trailer, Phillips said.
Franklin firefighters arrived about that time and tried to locate the Clydes inside the burning 14-foot-by-70-foot trailer, Assistant Chief John Householder said.
The firefighters were alerted when the fire call came in at 5:34 a.m. that there was a possibility people were trapped inside the trailer, he said.
Lt. Jeff Crespo and firefighter Bob Kettler peeled back the aluminum siding on the end of the trailer where they believed the bedroom was located, but found it opened to a bathroom instead, Householder said.
Crespo and Kettler, extinguishing the fire as they moved through the trailer, found the bodies of Gregg and Tina Clyde in the bedroom a short distance from the bathroom.
Skip Haswell, the Beaver County deputy coroner who handled the case, could not be reached yesterday regarding causes of death for the Clydes.
A spokesman for the county's emergency dispatch center said the coroner's officer would not comment on the fatal fire until today.
The Clydes' trailer is located on a hilltop within shouting distance of the Beaver-Lawrence County line, about four miles southeast of Ellwood City.
The parents of Tina Clyde, 38, live in a brown frame home behind the trailer.
Yesterday was Greg Clyde's 40th birthday, Phillips said.
The flat hilltop provided a spot for a medical helicopter to land and pick up Michael Clyde, who was flown to West Penn Hospital's burn unit.
Husing, who suffered burns on his right hand and a laceration on his shoulder, was taken to West Penn by ambulance after first being taken to Ellwood City Hospital.
A spokeswoman for West Penn said no information was being released about Clyde and Husing at the request of their families.
Nye was treated at Ellwood City Hospital.
State police Trooper Robert Ryhal, the fire marshal for the New Castle post, said at the scene that the fire apparently began on the rear deck and appeared to be accidental.
The investigation of the cause will include an examination of the various electrical connections on the deck, he said.
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