T-L Photo/JENNIFER COMPSTON-STROUGH Firefighters gather on the lawn of a Pigeon Point Road home outside Barnesville following a kitchen fire there. No injuries resulted.

BARNESVILLE — Barnesville Fire Chief Tim Hall credited a resident for quick thinking that saved the man’s home from being destroyed by a fire on Monday.

The blaze at 60339 Pigeon Point Road just outside the village was reported shortly after 11 a.m., and the Somerton and Bethesda fire departments responded to assist Barnesville firefighters as they battled the flames. A family of three occupies the house, and the two members who were at home at the time were able to escape safely.

Hall said the fire was contained to the kitchen, where a deep fryer had been in use. The rest of the house, though, sustained smoke and water damage, rendering it temporarily uninhabitable. Hall said even the clothes inside the house could not be worn at this time. He added that all evidence firefighters found indicates the deep fryer was the cause of the blaze.

Homeowner Delbert Parrish agreed with Hall that the deep fryer was the culprit.

“I was fixing breakfast for me and my sister-in-law, and I put a fryer on the stove — deep fryer. I made some potatoes and everything for her and me. … I went downstairs and I was sitting in my chair and I heard ‘crack, crack, crack.’ I thought she was falling against the wall or something. I went upstairs, opened that door, and the wall, the ceiling and everything was on fire, and it was just black smoke. I couldn’t see. I had to feel my way through.

“It was the fryer, that’s what it was. It burnt right through the fryer. … Another 10 minutes, I wouldn’t have made it. Smoke was already starting to get to me.”

Parrish and his sister-in-law escaped from the burning home and immediately called 911. As he made his way out, Parrish closed doors behind him, helping to trap and smother the flames.

“He did the right thing,” Hall said. “When he got out of the house, he shut the doors, sealed the house back out. When we got here, there was smoke puffing out all the eaves and out of the attic vents, and had that got oxygen, it would have really went.

“He saved his own house, pretty much, by shutting the doors.”

Hall said firefighters knocked the flames down quickly after they arrived.

“That just goes to show you, don’t panic and run out and leave the doors open,” Hall continued. “If they get oxygen, poof.”

Parrish said the family has lived ion the home for two and a half years and love the property. He said they moved to Barnesville from Martins Ferry.

The family had tentative plans to stay with Parrish’s daughter at her home while they worked with their insurance company to arrange for cleaning and repair of their house.

In addition to the fire department, the Barnesville Police Department responded, the Belmont County CARES program sent a representative to assist the fire victims, and the Salvation Army’s Disaster Services vehicle was on hand in support of the firefighters.