Seven of family's eight children perish in farmhouse fire

BLAIN, Pa. - Through her picture window, Beth Pasquali saw the flames light up the night sky over Sherman's Valley.

It was almost 11 on Tuesday night. She woke her husband and told him the Clouse farmhouse was burning.

Inside were seven of the Clouses' eight young children. Their father was making his evening milk-truck run. Their mother was milking cows in the barn, barely 100 feet from the house.

Chris Pasquali was racing to pull on his clothes when a loud boom shook this farming community 30 miles west of Harrisburg.

"I saw the house fully engulfed in flames when I heard the explosion," Pasquali said Wednesday. "There's no light out here. It was bright orange with that black sky." He told of driving as fast as he could to the house, thinking, "I just hope some got out."

Only one did.

Firefighters were in the two-story, wood-frame house by the time Pasquali arrived. They removed the bodies of six girls and one boy, ages 7 months to 11 years. The children's 3-year-old sister had escaped, running into the darkness to find her mother.

Theodore Clouse had left his home just before 10 p.m. to begin his rounds, picking up milk at the neighboring farms. His wife, Janelle, was in the barn, milking the family's dairy cows.

That was when the couple's 3-year-old daughter ran into the barn, alerting her mother to the smoke.

Janelle Clouse raced back to the house and tried to enter, but the smoke drove her back. She ran from one neighbor's house to another till she found someone to call 911, police said.

Firefighters ran their water-tank trucks dry trying to extinguish the flames, Chris Pasquali said, and had to try pulling water from a small stream nearby.

Before long, emergency personnel and equipment surrounded the house. A volunteer, Terry Zellers, was rerouting traffic up the road about an hour later when a milk tanker truck pulled up. The driver identified himself to Zellers as Ted Clouse.

"He told me, 'I've lost all my kids but one,' " Zellers said.

The seven children died of smoke inhalation, authorities said.

Perry County Coroner Mike Shalonis read the names and ages to a reporter.

Christina, 11; Isabel, 9; Brady, 7; Hannah, 6; Heidi, 4; Miranda, 2; and Samantha, 7 months.

In 28 years as coroner, Shalonis said, "I've never seen a tragedy of this magnitude."

Janelle Clouse's mother said her daughter was pregnant with the couple's ninth child, the Associated Press reported.

State police fire marshals were investigating the cause of the fire. Janelle Clouse's father, Noah Sauder, told the AP that he suspected a propane heater in the kitchen.

The village of Blain sits at the heart of an Amish and Mennonite settlement in Perry County, where horse-drawn buggies pull up to the drive-through windows at the bank and everyone shops at Book's Market, an old-time general store where you can buy your gun case, school supplies, and fixings for dinner.

Janelle Clouse was raised a Mennonite, friends said. Her family was among a wave of farmers who arrived in the mid-1970s from Lancaster County as rising land prices forced them 75 miles west in search of cheaper land. They found it in hilly terrain that proved suitable for dairy and cattle. But stagnant milk prices have made it tough going for dairy farmers in more recent times.

"They worked hard," said Ray Zimmerman, a dairy farmer and family friend, who described the Clouses as an energetic couple.

Neighbors said the family was very private and attended the Church of the Living Christ in nearby Loysville. The church has set up a relief fund for the family.

Chris Pasquali said several of the Clouse children had attended Sunday school classes with his son and daughter.

Pasquali, an accountant, said he had lasted only a few hours at work Wednesday before heading home. The exhaustion and the emotions of the long night had taken its toll. "It's just one of the scariest things you can imagine," he said.

On Wednesday, the charred ruins of the farmhouse, its front siding completely gone, stood out against a gray sky, the air filled with the acrid smells of smoke and manure.

The only identifiable piece of furniture that remained: a crib in a first-floor room. A plump springer spaniel, his collar jingling, circled the house, sniffing the piles of charred aluminum siding.

In late afternoon, the Clouses' herd of Holsteins and brown Swiss cows clustered by the side of the road, waiting to be milked.

Such is the rhythm of farm life, even amid tragedy. A neighbor, Ginger Kling, did the only thing she could think of to help.

She pulled on her work gloves and boots and her Dickies jacket and drove over to milk the Clouses' cows.

"I grew up on a farm. That's all I know how to do," said Kling, waiting in the chilly mist for the evening milking to begin. "I can scrape manure and feed calves and milk."

When asked if she knew the family, Kling said, "Around here, everybody knows everybody. Whether 10 miles or five miles, we're all neighbors."