"It looked like a bomb went off."
That's how Richard Wager described the scene on Hoffman Road on Wednesday night, when an explosion leveled a house and killed a volunteer firefighter who lived in the home.
Wager, who lives down the street from where the explosion took place, and a firefighter saved a woman from the wreckage as flames spread throughout the rubble.
It's not yet clear what caused the explosion, which killed Lawrence "Larry" Pariseau, 61, and injured the 62-year-old woman who was pulled from the debris. Both of them were in the house when it exploded, state police said. Pariseau, who owned the two-story home that was built in 1840, had been a volunteer firefighter in town for the last two years, said Brian Walsh, the fire chief of the Pine Plains Fire Company.