March 28--MIDLAND -- A Midland man allowed smoke from burning chicken to fill a floor of a borough apartment building, causing residents to evacuate March 16, Midland police said.
Ralph C. Welch, 45, of 500 Beaver Ave., Apartment 508, Corak Towers, is charged with risking catastrophe and reckless endangerment.
According to a criminal complaint filed by Midland Police Chief Joseph D'Itri, police and firefighters responded to the building around 6:40 a.m. when smoke filled the fifth floor. Officers went to the fifth floor and found Welch's door still locked.
Welch refused to answer the door so police started to unlock it when he opened it then turned around and went back inside the "smoke-filled room," D'Itri wrote.
D'Itri wrote Welch would not tell officers where the fire was. "The smoke was so bad inside the apartment you could hardly see four feet in front of you," D'Itri wrote.
In the kitchen, D'Itri wrote that a pan was on the stove "smoking like a smoke stack." The chicken in the pan was "so burnt it started to turn to ashes," he wrote.
D'Itri said he took the pan and put it out an open window. Welch would not say much, police said, and officers could smell alcohol coming from him.
Surveillance cameras caught Welch coming out of the building about an hour before the incident. Footage, D'Itri said, showed Welch trying to pet a cat, sitting down on the ground and appearing "unsteady" when he stood and re-entered the building.
D'Itri said the "negligent act" caused the elderly residents to evacuate in the early morning and forced four fire departments and four police officers to respond.
Police said Welch was also involved in a similar incident involving burnt chicken wings in 2009.
Copyright 2012 - Beaver County Times, Pa.
