Three Amish Girls Airlifted After School Explosion and Fire

A tragedy has struck an Amish community in northwestern Pennsylvania as an explosion at a schoolhouse set the building on fire this morning – leaving three Amish girls badly burned. (Story updated below)

The Amish school is located in the Spartansburg, Pennsylvania community, and appears to have burned to the ground. The girls were believed to have “filled a lantern with the wrong fuel”. From a brief initial report at GoErie.com:

SPARTANSBURG ― Three girls were flown to a Buffalo hospital with burns suffered in a fire that leveled an Amish schoolhouse in rural Crawford County at about 9:30 a.m. on March 27, authorities said.

The girls, whose ages were not immediately known, were inside the school in the 25900 block of Byler Road when the fire erupted inside the building.

There is no news on the girls’ condition at this time, other than them being flown to the Buffalo hospital.

I am not sure what fuel that might have been, but you wonder if they didn’t mix up gasoline – or white gas/naphtha – with kerosene. Both produce vapors which are highly flammable and can create a flash explosion.

The Spartansburg community is in Crawford County, PA, a heavily-Amish part of the state.

Keep these girls and their families in your prayers. Details are minimal right now, and we don’t even know their ages. An investigation is ongoing. I will update this post when more is known.

Update: Two Girls and A Teacher?

Susan Hougelman at Simple Life of New Wilmington shares additional details in a Facebook post, including that one of the victims was a teacher.

Susan is local to the general area, and likely heard this from an Amish or Amish-adjacent source. Here are the fresh details:

There was supposed an accidental mix of kerosene and possibly gasoline this morning.

The explosion was so intense it burnt the clothing completely off of them.

3 were life flighted (two students and the teacher!)

Update: apparently school had not started yet!

Praise God there weren’t more students hurt!!

In this scenario, it sounds like they were lighting a lantern before school started. Maybe the teacher and a couple of earlier-arriving students. Just tough to hear.

Update #2: At Least A Dozen Children Escaped

A report by Carol Fielding in the Corry Journal confirms it was two students and a teacher. The schoolchildren’s burns are reportedly more severe than the teacher’s, who, as is often the case in Amish schools, is also very young.

The report also states that the fire was believed to have started when the “wrong fuel oil” was used to ignite the schoolhouse’s stove, not a lantern as was earlier suggested, according to Spartansburg Volunteer Fire Department Chief Chris Hughes.

Additionally, the schoolhouse had already been extensively destroyed by the time firefighters arrived on scene, suggesting that the fire was intense and moved quickly. More:

The SVFD was dispatched at 9:26 a.m. after a local resident called 911 to report the blaze at Hidden Valley School, 25983 North Byler Road.

When firefighters arrived, Hughes said, the building had already collapsed to the ground and students had been evacuated to a nearby structure.

“Half of our crew went directly to the fire while the other half went to assist the victims,” Hughes said.

Between 12 and 15 children escaped without injury. However, early reports of six to seven burn victims prompted a large-scale emergency response.

Ultimately, one teenager, the school’s teacher, and two younger students sustained burns. Hughes noted the teacher’s injuries were less severe than those of the two children.

Here is an additional image of firefighters putting out hot spots at the scene:

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