Pa. Woman Rescued After 3 Days in Flooded Basement

A Douglass Township woman who was trapped for three days in her flooded basement after the stairs collapsed beneath her was pulled to safety after a long and complicated rescue Tuesday afternoon.

The woman, identified by her minister and friends as Rosalyn Willis, is in her late 50s. She lives alone in the dilapidated house, where friends said she grew up, in the 800 block of Douglass Drive.

She was found about 2:30 p.m. by a friend who became concerned after not hearing from her for three days.

Tia Quarles of Pottstown said she went to the front door, but at first had difficulty opening it.

"It was an angel that let me in," she said.

Quarles said she heard Willis calling for help from the basement. Once she heard Willis and started talking to her, she said she knew everything would be all right.

But she had no way of rescuing Willis by herself so she called another friend, Helen Peace, who was visiting from Virginia.

"I called 9-1-1 even though she was protesting," Peace said of Willis. "After we saw the conditions no way. We had to."

Firefighters and paramedics arrived shortly after 4 and worked about three hours before Willis was rushed to Reading Hospital. She was being treated in the emergency room late Tuesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Quarles said Willis had been checking a circuit breaker in her basement when the stairs collapsed beneath her, sending her tumbling down the steps and into more than 4 feet of stagnant water.

Firefighters from several companies responded and called in a scuba team from Boyertown for the difficult rescue.

Fire officials said they were cautious before entering the water because it was contaminated with sewage and possibly fuel oil.

Willis was standing in the more than waist-deep water when rescuers got to her, fire officials said.

Divers in full gear and masks pulled Willis to safety by strapping her to a ladder attached to an elaborate pulley system, Chief Richard Ford of the Amity Fire Company said.

"It was a smaller space, so when it came to getting her out it was a bit more difficult than we expected," said Lt. Stephen Cartmell, a diver from the Boyertown Fire Company.

Willis told firefighters she was all right before they pulled her out.

A half-dozen fire engines and three ambulances were stationed on the road outside the house. Firefighters set up a decontamination area where Willis was cleaned up before she was placed in an ambulance and taken to the hospital.

Her minister, Henry Fordham of the nearby Allegheny East Conference Seventh-day Adventist church, spoke to Willis while she was in the ambulance before it left for the hospital, and later said that she appeared to be unharmed.

A group of friends and neighbors gathered on a nearby hill and watched the rescue operation unfold. They said Willis lives by herself and has relatives in Harrisburg, who were en route to Berks County on Tuesday night.

Quarles, who said she has been friends with Willis for almost 10 years, said she had never set foot in the house until Tuesday, though they speak by phone a few times a week.

"I talked to her on Saturday, but then she wasn't answering on Sunday," Quarles said. "I knew something had to be wrong. She always answers her cellphone if she doesn't answer her home phone."

Friends and neighbors said Willis is a kind but private woman, and has become somewhat of a recluse since her mother died more than 20 years ago.

From the outside, the house appeared in disrepair, with blue tarps covering the roof and rain gutters and window sills falling from the front of the home.

A neighboring home appeared to be abandoned, with plywood in the windows and no vehicles parked out front.

"The house is a mess," Assistant Fire Chief Arthur Heist of the Amity company said. "No one should be living here."

The water probably had been in the basement for several months, Ford said.

"I was on the inside, and it went very well," he said of the rescue. "But it took a long time because we had to find a way to get the guys from Boyertown into the water and her out of it safely."

Contact Jason A. Kahl: 610-371-5024 or jkahl@readingeagle.com.

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