6 displaced in Hill District apartment fire
A malfunctioning flashlight might have sparked a two-alarm fire that displaced six people in the Hill District Saturday morning.
Fire and emergency crews responded to the fire at a two-story brick row house in the 500 block of Francis Street at 11:09 a.m. The fire spread from a firstfloor apartment on the left side of the building to the second floor and lasted approximately 45 minutes, officials said.
Resident Caren Pendleton, 59, said her 10-year-old grandson was playing with a flashlight under her bed at 549 Francis St. when the flashlight malfunctioned and caught the bed’s comforter on fire.
Ms. Pendleton said she yanked the comforter off the bed and brought it outside to extinguish the fire, but when she returned to her room, the bed frame was in flames. She alerted the other occupants of the four-unit building and evacuated her daughter and three grandchildren, who were in the first-floor apartment.
“I’m devastated,” said Ms. Pendleton, who had lived in the apartment for six years.
The Pittsburgh police and fire department are investigating the official cause of the fire.
Deputy Fire Chief Michael Mullen said no one was injured in the fire, but as a precautionary measure, emergency responders sent Ms. Pendleton’s 10-year-old grandson to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC for treatment of possible smoke inhalation.
Chief Mullen said the fire was difficult to extinguish as flames had entered crevices between the building’s walls and ceilings.
“The guys had to work really hard physically to open up the walls and ceilings and dig the fire out,” he said. “They don’t do that, the house will just keep burning.”
Chief Mullen said he didn’t think the fire had damaged the building’s structure, and that the apartments could be remodeled and reoccupied. The fire did not spread to the apartments on the other side of the row house, he said, as a thick brick wall divides the building.
The Red Cross is providing temporary housing to six people displaced by the fire.