MANCHESTER, NH – K. Michael Howland and his wife Michelle were on their rooftop deck Sunday night around midnight when they noticed their neighbor’s TV flickering.
Howland, 58, of 92 Prospect St. said that was a good thing. It meant their neighbor in the first-floor apartment at 96 Prospect St. was already in bed and they would not be getting a call that she needed help getting into it.
By 2 a.m., however, they were calling the woman’s sons and her sister to let them know of her tragic death in a fire.
The Howlands, who served as caretakers for the woman, said about 1:30 a.m. Sunday they heard sirens and looked out to see firetrucks next door.
They watched as firefighters raced into the building and took the woman’s charred body out a rear bedroom window.
Howland, who is known as “Marshal Mike” in the neighborhood where he and his wife have lived for 22 years, said the woman was in her 60s and had lived at the Prospect Street address for about eight years.
She needed a walker to get around and had other medical issues that required her to use oxygen.
She also was a smoker, enjoyed wine and was known to throw a few F-bombs around, he said, recalling the neighbor he and his wife had assisted over the years.
Howland said he and his wife chose to ignore the cussing. His granddaughters, he said, adored her. “She spoiled them,” he said.
Howland managed to fight back tears as he talked about the victim – until the conclusion of the interview. Then the tears fell down his face as he explained how he became disabled when his spine was broken in an accident 26 years ago at a Massachusetts steel plant, and how he wished he’d had the opportunity to run into the building and rescue his neighbor before she was engulfed in flames.
His hope is she died from smoke inhalation before being burned.
The New Hampshire State Fire Marshal’s Office have identified the victim as Sharon Little, 65. The cause and manner of her death are still pending further investigation. District Fire Chief John Starr would only say the fire was accidental. Reported just before 1:30 a.m. the fire was brought under control about 25 minutes later. Starr said damage is estimated at $15,000.
Doug Bews, who lives in the second-floor apartment, said smoke alarms woke him. He got up, walked around but didn’t smell any smoke and went back and laid down.
As the detectors continued to sound, he got up again, looked out into the hallway and down the staircase but still didn’t smell anything. When he went to his kitchen, however, he said he got that first whiff of something on fire.
“It was very faint, but I could tell something was on fire,” he said. Then he heard his neighbor banging on the door yelling, “Fire! Fire!” When he saw smoke coming up through the common doors at the bottom of the staircase he grabbed his bathrobe, his phone and ran out the door.
Outside, he could see “the deep orange glow” in the bedroom window of the rear first-floor apartment and heard “the strange deep pop and cracking that you hear in a house fire.”
Soon after, the firetrucks arrived and the fire was out.
“They did a good job,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Bews was able to return to his apartment, which later in the morning still had a smoke odor to it.
Bews, retired from a 37-year career as a graphic designer, has lived there for about five years. He now works as a handyman and contractor.
He said Sharon Little was known to smoke while on oxygen, something he said he complained about to previous property management. He said he was told she has rights, that there was nothing to be done because the ACLU would get involved because it was a medical issue.
Bews said he was pretty vocal about his view that she posed a hazard to him, the other tenant and people in the neighborhood.
“I said one of these days she’s going to blow this place up,” he said.
Bews said Little previously set herself on fire accidentally – the oxygen tube melted in her lap, he said — and she drove herself to the emergency room. She didn’t want the EMTs to remove her, he said.
Howland confirmed the incident saying it happened about six or seven months ago. She suffered a serious burn on her leg and had to undergo skin grafts, he said. She was hospitalized for 30 days.
“We said she learned her lesson,” he said with a shrug.
She started removing the oxygen when she smoked after a fire inspector saw her outside smoking while on oxygen. Howland said he spoke to her for about 20 minutes that day.
Little still smoked, however, and Howland said the fire that burned her months ago happened when a cigarette ash fell into her lap where she placed the oxygen tube.
Manchester Fire Chief Daniel Goonan said over his 37-year career he has gone to many fires caused by people smoking while on oxygen.
“It’s a tough habit to break,” he said. “It’s common sense but people have free will.”
Bews said it appeared to him that Little was smoking in bed but not necessarily while on oxygen. Bews, who went inside the apartment after the scene was cleared, said the oxygen tube was melted all the way across the floor to the oxygen tank which did not explode.
He said he’s saddened by his neighbor’s death, but also felt fortunate that the fire and the damage done was not worse.
“I’m thankful I’m here and not my daughters dealing with my body,” Bews said.
