‘Very overwhelming.’ Family of 5 displaced, State College-area home destroyed by fire
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A fire that began about 11:55 p.m. Sunday destroyed a family’s State College‑area home.
- Four volunteer fire companies responded as flames spread from the garage into the roof.
- A GoFundMe organized by a friend raised over $22,000 within 10 hours.
A family of five is confronting an uncertain future after a swift-moving fire destroyed their State College-area home in the dead of night.
Woody and Molly Wilson, parents of two girls and a boy between the ages of 6 and 12, were awoken about 11:55 p.m. Sunday by a fire that began in their garage and extended into their house along the 600 block of Smith Lane in Harris Township.
Woody Wilson — the owner of Wilson Home Farms, a personalized backyard farming service that installs and maintains vegetable gardens and fruit orchids — told the Centre Daily Times he used the garage as a workshop for his business.
They had lived in the home for the past decade.
“It’s been hard to figure out what to work on,” Wilson said Monday. “... I was aimlessly drifting through things that needed to be done, but I wasn’t really getting any of them truly accomplished. It’s been very overwhelming.”
Four volunteer fire companies arrived to find the attached garage engulfed in flames. Boalsburg Fire Co. said in a Facebook post that the fire extended into the first and second floors before quickly spreading across the roof.
A Centre Region fire marshal is investigating the cause. The Alpha, Centre Hall and Pleasant Gap fire companies assisted, as well as Centre LifeLink EMS.
After waking up, Wilson said he thought it was a false alarm and planned to throw the smoke detectors into the garage so his children could continue sleeping. He was instead met by smoke and the reality it was not a false alarm.
The family, including their three dogs and cat, evacuated and were left to hope the fire departments would get there in time to save the house. They quickly learned the garden hose they used to try to extinguish the blaze would not work.
Wilson said he then foolishly tried to save what he could from the house — a practice that’s generally discouraged but easier said than done. He and his wife backed their vehicles away from the garage before trying to also save a skid steer. Wilson said he burned his arm in the process.
No other injuries were reported. The Wilsons spent the rest of Monday morning with his parents in the Millheim area.
“The speed in which that fire moved, if we had not woken up by the fire alarms, my son could be very injured,” Wilson said. “He was in the first room that got hit. We were out of the house by then, but his room itself is totally ruined.
“If we didn’t have those couple minutes then it could have been a much more tragic story.”
A page on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe was organized by longtime family friend Bodhi Spiegel. He said all funds would go toward the Wilson family to help them through the difficult days and weeks ahead.
It raised more than $22,000 within 10 hours Monday.
“This fundraiser is being created so friends, family, neighbors, and the State College community have one place to come together and support them,” Spiegel wrote. “Woody and Molly are the kind of people who would never expect to be in this position, but right now they need their community around them.”
It’s unclear what the future holds, but Wilson told the CDT his family would like to stay at the property for as long as possible. He said it’s a magical and perfect place to raise children.
“It checked off a lot of the boxes and when the opportunity came up I had to jump on it,” Wilson said. “I couldn’t even afford it when we started, but I knew that it was something that we could grow with.”