Pa. Apartment Fire Under Investigation

May 17--Wilkes-Barre City fire officials are trying to find out what caused a four-alarm fire that badly damaged a three-apartment house at 62 S. Welles St. on Sunday. Paramedics with the city's Medic 5 unit were returning from an ambulance call at 4:28 a.m. when they saw smoke coming from behind the Stegmaier building and traced it to a fully-involved structure fire, Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jay Delaney said.

May 18, 2010

2 min read

May 17--Wilkes-Barre City fire officials are trying to find out what caused a four-alarm fire that badly damaged a three-apartment house at 62 S. Welles St. on Sunday.

Paramedics with the city's Medic 5 unit were returning from an ambulance call at 4:28 a.m. when they saw smoke coming from behind the Stegmaier building and traced it to a fully-involved structure fire, Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jay Delaney said.

"When the firefighters got there they found fire shooting out of almost every window of the property," he said. "There was actually so much fire when the firefighters got there they weren't able to go in and search the building."

Delaney said neighbors told firefighters no one was at home. The two upstairs apartments at 62 S. Welles St. were vacant, but the one downstairs was occupied by a tenant who was temporarily staying with a family member who needed medical care, he said.

There were 29 firefighters, plus several more who came in an hour early for day shift and two paramedics, at the scene, Delaney said. "It was that large of a fire that we just needed the personnel," he said.

There were no injuries, Delaney said.

Most of the firefighters' efforts were on protecting the neighboring property, and they succeeded in preventing the fire from spreading. "That's kind of what the strategy was. The guys knew early on it was really cooking," Delaney said.

The fire took an hour and a half to knock down, and 62 S. Welles St. sustained what he called "extensive damage."

Robert and Janet Keeley of Perkiomenville, Montgomery County, owned the property, Delaney said.

He said the cause of the fire is under investigation, and that Fire Capt. Alan Klapat was at the scene Sunday to get it started.

"Yesterday's on Bethel Lane was easy because the child admitted to playing with the lighter and his brother witnessed it," Delaney said.

That two-alarm fire occurred Saturday around 9:08 a.m. in a back room on the second floor of a duplex at 17 Bethel Lane, according to Assistant Fire Chief Tom Makar. He said the fire damaged the room and the attic.

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