Staff photo / Dan Pompili Western Reserve Joint Fire District Chief Chip Comstock said the house at 6932 New Castle Road in Poland Township is a total loss. The fire that destroyed it also cost an elderly, handicapped woman her life. Although she has not been formally identified by the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office, the house is registered to Leona Semivan and Thomas Sandor. A man at the house on Monday said he lived there with his mother, but declined to provide their names.

POLAND TOWNSHIP — A woman is dead after a Sunday night house fire just west of the Pennsylvania border.

Western Reserve Joint Fire District Chief Chip Comstock said the call came in at 11:32 p.m. Sunday from the woman’s son after he arrived home and saw flames coming from the windows. The district serves Poland Village and Poland Township.

Comstock said the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office and Mahoning County Coroner are investigating the cause of the blaze, but the woman, 77, who was elderly and handicapped, was very badly burned and her identity will have to be verified through dental records.

The Mahoning County Auditor’s website states that the house at 6932 New Castle Road is owned by Leona Semivan and Thomas Sandor, 55. A man at the house, who declined to identify himself, said he and his mother lived there. He said it was too soon after the tragedy for him to feel comfortable speaking about it.

Although it is still standing, Comstock described the house as “a total loss” because of the significant structural damage.

He said firefighters only had to work for about 10 to 15 minutes to knock down the majority of the fire before they were able to find the woman in an area which he said she used for a first-floor bedroom.

“My concern was that if there was any chance she was still alive, I did not want to leave her in there,” Comstock said, but they determined very quickly that she died in the fire.

Comstock said he then called the fire marshal’s and coroner’s offices, who both came to the scene and completed their work as firefighters were still working to put out the rest of the flames.

Comstock said the house, a Cape Cod, was well-built and packed with insulation.

“There was a lot of wood and plaster that made it difficult to reach some of the areas where the fire was still active,” he said. “The ceiling of the bedroom caved in and that made it more difficult to get where we needed to, and some of our guys were trying to get at it from the outside.”

He said a Western Reserve crew had to return early Monday morning because one small space was still smoking and some smoldering embers were found and extinguished.

Comstock said other variables also complicated the work, including the lack of easy access to water in the area, where there are no fire hydrants, so they had to request that other local departments provide water by tanker trucks.

From the Western Reserve station at the corner of New Castle and Hubbard Roads, Poland also brought a 2,000-gallon tanker and a 1,000-gallon engine of its own.

Comstock said the heat and humidity from the weather made the job more difficult as well and the mutual aid provided by other fire departments was welcome.

He said Struthers, Lowellville, Coitsville, Hubbard and Campbell all responded, as did Mahoning Township and Pulaski Township in Pennsylvania.

He said his department is still working on its report of the fire and awaiting updates from the state and county.

Auditor’s records and a search of local obituaries shows that the house, built in 1940, was Semivan’s family home, purchased by her parents, Joseph and Olga Rendes, in 1970. Semivan bought it from her mother in 1999, and then added Sandor to the title in 2001, according to auditor’s records.