SWIMMING: Diving provides safe haven for PV’s Ott after fire ravages family home

Photo by Ted Hodgins Perkiomen Valley’s Chase Ott will compete in the PIAA Diving Championships this week at Bucknell.

By Rosemarie Ross
rross@pottsmerc.com

LEWISBURG — The start of 2013 could not have been a more depressing for Perkiomen Valley standout diver Chase Ott and his family.
Sound asleep in his family’s Schwenkesville home, Ott suddenly awakened to the fire alarms blasting throughout the house on a cold January night around 1 a.m.
“When the alarms went off I woke up and stepped out of my room and there was smoke everywhere,” Ott recalled last week. “We had a wooden stove and we thought it was just smoke coming out of the stove, But then we could hear the wall crackling. Something wasn’t right. Then the wall caught on fire. And we ran out, grabbed the dogs, pulled the cars out of the garage, called the fire company.
“It was rough, it was scary. But we were just focusing on getting everyone out and safe. It wasn’t necessarily being scared, it was more like had my adrenaline going. Afterward, watching the house go up in flames, that’s what was sad.”
Everyone did make it out safely. But most of the house was gone, damaged by either the fire, water or smoke.

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