Jim and Evelyn McCarty have some really good neighbors.  You can even call them heroic.  We would all be lucky to have neighbors like these.

The Lower Township couple experienced one of those worst-case situations we all dread yesterday when their Villas house exploded from a suspected gas leak. They are both now hospitalized in critical condition with burns . But, if not for the heroic actions of their good Samaritan neighbors, they almost certainly would have died in the fire.

Jim and Evelyn were in their home on the 200 block of Atlantic Avenue in Villas yesterday at the time of the explosion around 4p.m. Both of them were trapped under the charred rubble of their home; dazed, injured and in real danger of not being able to escape the flames and smoke.

That's when a half dozen people from the neighborhood came to the couple's rescue, running in to the burning house to pull Evelyn out of the debris and then returning to find Jim McCarty, trapped and injured in the shower, and pushing him to safety in his wheelchair.

Lower Township Mayor Mike Beck, who lives just across the way from the McCarty home,  told NBC-10 TV the neighbors deserve credit for their courage under fire.  "Kudos to the neighbors because they had two people trapped in there, two seniors, and the neighbors pitched in and went in there and pulled these people out," Beck said.

"The people from the neighborhood, the people who live here including an off-duty police officer, went right in and pulled the wife out," said Beck. "Once they found out where the husband was supposed to be, they went back in and got the husband out of there."

Let's hear it for good neighbors!

Check out this video from yesterday's explosion scene.

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