DUANSBURG — Four inches of snow kept the school buses at bay on the day that the Kosiers’ house burned.

Fire trucks made their way through the rural winter landscape as flames from the chimney licked the roof of the two-story house.

“It was terribly icy out,” said Stephanie Kosier, a science teacher at Guilderland High School, whose husband, David, teaches math.  “It happened to be a snow day that day,” she said, so school was closed.

The couple and their two children, ages 4 and 1, were home that morning around 8:15 when Mrs. Kosier smelled something burning as she gathered laundry in an upstairs closet.

“You don’t think your house is on fire,” she said. 

As she headed down the stairs to tell her husband, a neighbor came knocking, to tell them that their house was aflame.  More neighbors soon followed and a group went back into the house to rescue family pictures and albums before the fire overtook the house.

Before the fire, the family didn’t know their neighbors very well, but, Mrs. Kosier said, they learned something: “We have neighbors who were willing to run into a burning building,” she said.

By the time Rick Peterson got to the scene, from the Pine Grove fire department, which was called as an auxiliary squad, the first floor had been consumed, making it impossible for firefighters to get inside and put out the flames.

“It was extremely hard to fight,” said Peterson, a 27-year veteran of the department.  Until the Kosiers are able to rebuild their house, which they plan to do on the same foundation, Peterson offered them a home. 

“It was a family in need,” he said of his reasoning.

After his mother died in October, he’s had her empty house, which he offered to the Kosiers.  “I gave them the key and said, ‘Here.  Use it as long as you need,’” he recounted matter-of-factly.

“You have to look at the positive things,” Mrs. Kosier said.  “You definitely find out about the generosity of people.”

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The Guilderland Fire Department will hold a ziti dinner to benefit the Kosier family on April 25 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Western Turnpike Golf Course clubhouse.