"It was a terrible, helpless feeling," Sypsomos said.
Other Deptford fire companies extinguished the blaze, but the house was ruined.
"We lost just about everything," Ellis said on a recent, bitter night as he, Sypsomos, and company president Robert Dessin aimed flashlights at the burned ceiling timbers and boarded windows of the gutted structure on Delsea Drive.
The blaze was just the beginning of the small-town fire company's ordeal. After vowing to rebuild, members learned they had been betrayed by one of their own.
His deception has left the nearly 100-year-old company homeless and broke, halved its squad of 19 volunteers, and tarnished its good name in the community.
An FBI investigation revealed that the company's treasurer, Charles Mancini, 45, of Wenonah, had robbed the company for years. First he took out an unauthorized $90,000 bank loan in the company's name. Then, after the fire, he stole $448,990 in insurance money.
To conceal his thievery, Mancini, who also was the company's president, gave members bogus bank statements, authorities said.
"We trusted him. That was our big mistake," Dessin said.
In September, Mancini pleaded guilty to fraud and embezzlement in federal court in Camden. He will be sentenced in March and faces 10 years in prison, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
The cause of the fire, which the Gloucester County fire marshal said had begun in an electrical closet, is listed as "undetermined."
The investigation is continuing, however, and "the fire is still considered suspicious," said Detective George Johnson, a Deptford police spokesman.
