ERVING — A single bottle of water may have kept a house from burning down Wednesday afternoon.
“My daughter went across the street to my house to get a bottle of water, and came back screaming ‘fire!’” said Lester Maynard of 32 North St.
Maynard was visiting his daughter, Debbie Pervere, when she crossed the street to his house to get some bottled water around 2 p.m.
“I got there, and I couldn’t see through the windows,” said Pervere. “I heard a ‘beep beep’ (from the smoke detector), and when I opened the door, smoke came pouring out.” She then slammed the door shut — helping to cut off the fire’s air supply — and ran back to her house to call 911.
“We were able to knock the fire down to its point of origin, without a lot of extension (into the rest of the house),” said Capt. Luke Hartnett of the Erving Fire Department.