Plum family recalls neighbor's cry for help after blast

Beth Napoleon felt the force of the blast that obliterated her neighbor’s home directly across the street from hers in Plum’s Rustic Ridge neighborhood on Saturday.

Worse, she heard her neighbor’s cry for help.

“I was in-between things. I was just relaxing on the couch with one of my dogs in-between chores,” she said. “It just felt like something huge landed on our house.

“I got up and ran to the stairs to make sure that (my son) Jack was OK. He said ‘yes.’ There wasn’t a front door, but I saw out the door there was no house across the street. I ran out to check if people were OK. I started to hear Paul (Oravitz) asking for help. I tried to run over there. He was asking for help.”

Recounting the story on Monday, she was overcome with emotion. Her husband, Rick, who was not home at the time of the explosion, reinforced to her that they got Oravitz out of the rubble.

“So no sadness,” he said.

At least three others in the house weren’t as lucky. According to family and friends, Casey and Keegan Clontz and Kevin Sebunia also were in that home and died.

Allegheny County officials so far have not identified those who died, saying only that four adults and one child died in the blast and subsequent fires that consumed three homes. In addition to the deaths, investigators say, three people were injured — one in critical condition in a hospital and two who were treated and released.

Though Rick Napoleon wasn’t home to feel the force of the blast, since Saturday he has felt a different kind of force.

“The Plum community is amazing,” he said. “They’re rallying. They’re getting everything for me. I don’t have to even think about it. I couldn’t be blessed to have better neighbors. It’s tremendous the outpouring of love and support. I literally have to charge my phone twice a day because my phone will not stop ringing with people wanting to offer to help.”

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One thing his neighbors can’t help with is the condition of his family’s home. It will be torn down because the blast left it structurally unsafe. The family lived there for 18 years.

“It blew in the entire front side of my house, crumbled my garage on the side. When you go into the house, the drywall is cracked, all the nails are popped through the ceiling,” he said. “It blew everything through. People don’t understand that was like a little A-bomb.”

How many other houses will have to be torn down was not known Monday. Borough officials were meeting to discuss it, borough spokeswoman Carrie DelRosso said.

Rick Napoleon is a former special education math teacher at Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh. He was at work as a guard at SCI Fayette when the explosion happened.

“I got an outside, call, and my wife told me that the house across the street exploded,” he said. “I never expected … anything until I saw what I saw.”

The family has been staying with Rick’s grandmother in Squirrel Hill. The couple has three sons, Anthony, 22, Andrew, 19, and Jack, 16.

The Napoleons were allowed inside their house Monday to recover a few possessions. Those included the flag that was over the coffin of Rick’s grandfather during his funeral. His grandfather, like Rick, served in the Army. They also retrieved the lineup card from Anthony’s first win as a baseball pitcher at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

They plan to come back Tuesday to get as much as they can, including Beth’s wedding bouquet that was dried and framed.

They hope they can get back in.

“It’s structurally unsafe,” Rick said. “They said, as long as it’s not a windy day, I’m allowed to go back in and retrieve the rest of my belongings, which is good so we’ll get the most important stuff out.”

But, ultimately, the things don’t matter.

“My boys are healthy and happy. I’m blessed. There’s four families that are not whole. Mine is,” he said. “I cannot feel sad about a house. That’s not who I raised my boys to be or who I was raised to be. It’s just material stuff. Family’s everything, and my family’s whole.”