Loss of smell nearly disastrous for Monessen woman

By TAYLOR BROWN

tbrown@yourmvi.com

Cindy Hebel was reading her Bible when smoke began to fill the second floor of her home Sunday, but because she was recovering from COVID-19 she couldn’t smell it.

Hebel has lived in her childhood home in Monessen for the past decade and has become diligent about changing the batteries in her smoke alarms after family members in the fire service stressed its importance over the years.   

On Sunday, she woke up and walked to a make-shift office on her second floor to make coffee and toast as she does most mornings. 

She heard a crash as she was reading in her bedroom, but because she has two playful kittens she didn’t think anything of it.

“I have two kittens who love to play and chase each other around and I thought they knocked something over, so I did not think too much more about it and kept reading,” Hebel said. “I’m not sure how long went by, but all of the sudden I heard the smoke along go off and when I looked up my whole upstairs was full of dark smoke.”

She walked into her spare room to find flames spewing from a wicker waste basket on the floor. 

“I couldn’t believe that I did not smell this putrid smoke,” she said. “The toaster was basically melting, so the smell was terrible, like rubber burning.”

As the fire alarm continued to blare, instinct took over.

“When you hear a fire alarm, it throws you into a panic mode because the alarm is so loud,” she said. “Your instinct just kicks in. I remembered a few things from when I taught pre-school, to stay calm, to not run.”

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