NEW RUSSIA TWP. — Michelle Polen and her family were camping at Mohican State Park over the weekend when their house caught fire.

An empty house plus a fire spells disaster.

Unless some guardian angels are standing by, that is.

Strangers driving by their house saw the smoke, called 911, pounded on the door, grabbed a garden hose and extinguished the flames.

Polen said they saved her Russia Road home.

“It would have gone up like a bomb,” she said.

On the other side of the garage wall that caught fire were three dirt bikes, a four-wheeler and cans of gasoline, she said.

Inside the home were the family’s pets — a cat named Madee and skunks named Chip and Little Bella.

Chris Klakamp, of South Amherst, who extinguished the fire, said it was just chance that he was passing by shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday to go to lunch with his wife, Kay, and several friends.

While driving on Russia Road near the airport, Klakamp saw a big plume of white smoke drift across the road.

“I asked, ‘What the heck is that?’ and I turned the car around,” he said.

He saw flames devouring the side of a home and stopped.

“I started banging on the door while my wife called 911,” he said.

There was no answer, so Klakamp ran around the house and grabbed a garden hose.

It barely reached the corner of the house, so Klakamp had to hold the hose up and shoot blindly toward the flames.

In the meantime, several other people arrived and helped by yelling out directions on where to aim the water.

One lady with short blond hair held a big bowl on the porch while Klakamp filled it with water from the hose. Then she poured it onto hot spots that still smoldered. She told Klakamp she had stopped in case anyone was hurt.

A man and a teenager, possibly his son, phoned authorities to make sure help was on the way, Klakamp said. 

In the meantime, Polen’s brother-in-law, Rich, who lives nearby, ran up and opened the garage to make sure the inside of the house wasn’t on fire.

Oberlin Fire Department trucks left the station at 12:53 p.m. and arrived nine minutes later.

Fire Chief Dennis Kirin said they broke down doors and went through the home to make sure the fire wasn’t smoldering anywhere.

Kirin said it’s a good thing Klakamp, a retired Lorain teacher, and the others stopped to help.

“We’d probably both be surprised about the number of people who noticed it and drove on,” Kirin said.

Water from a garden hose might be useless in a bigger fire, but “in this case it worked out,” the fire chief said. No cause of the blaze has been determined, he said.

Polen, whose husband, Tony, brother-in-law Rich and father-in-law, Richard, operate Polen Implement, said she’s promised Klakamp and his wife steak dinners for their efforts.

Klakamp said, “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time — I’m not a hero — I just hope someone does the same thing if he goes by my house and it’s on fire.”

Contact Cindy Leise at 653-6250 or cleise@chroniclet.com.

 

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