Intense house fire in Washington Township leaves two dead. Detectives have opened a criminal investigation.
Only charred rubble remains at 13 Tranquility Court as the investigation continues into the cause of the fire.
The overnight calm on Tranquility Court in Washington Township was shattered early Sunday when a house caught fire and burned so intensely that neighbors described it as an explosion.
Police said they received several 911 calls just after 2 a.m. and found a home at 13 Tranquility Court fully engulfed in flames and heavily damaged.
One man and one woman were killed in the blaze, according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office, which has opened a criminal investigation.
“We’re not looking at it as if it was an accident,” said Tom Gilbert, the office’s chief of detectives.
Neighbors on the quiet cul-de-sac were still rattled midmorning Sunday, standing on their lawns in disbelief, the smell of the soggy, burnt home lingering in the air hours after the smoke had cleared.
“We could have been killed,” said Jill Rauf, who lives next door and whose 92-year-old mother was staying overnight for Mother’s Day.
No other injuries were reported. But the fire seriously damaged Rauf’s shed and melted the vinyl siding and window shutters of her home, leaving a portion of it looking like a Salvador Dalí painting against a clear blue sky.
The home on the other side of the fire also sustained significant damage.
“We’re lucky those houses didn’t catch fire,” Gilbert said.
Susan Pinto, who lives around the corner from the fire, was still awake at 2 a.m. when she heard “the biggest bang of my life.”
“It shook our house,” Pinto said. “I thought maybe something had fallen from the sky. Then it was just a red ball of a fire.”
“I thought it was fireworks,” said Michael Gay, whose doorbell camera captured the fire.
Only charred rubble remains at the site.
Residents on the block described the man who lived there as friendly, the type of guy who brings your trash cans up from the curb without asking.
Gilbert declined to release any additional information on the investigation, but neighbors were shocked to learn that the fire might have been set intentionally.
“He was a very kind guy. It just blows your mind,” said Rauf, whose dog was friends with the deceased man’s dog. She had heard that his dog survived.
Pinto sat out front of her home Sunday as the gas company, fire marshal, and criminal investigators came and went from the scene. She has been unable to get much sleep since the incident.
“I tried to go to sleep,” Pinto said. “But I’m just too stressed out.”