No injuries to humans, dogs in city house fire
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
A Washington firefighter works to extinguish a structure fire at 220 Maple Ave. in the city Friday afternoon.
William Woods,left, is a neighbor and rescued two dogs for the structure fire at 220 Maple Ave. in Washington on Friday, July 5, 2019.
Jimmy Ward was outside on his porch Friday afternoon in Washington when he heard a loud “kaboom” and saw a bright flash.
Figuring it was lightning, he and neighbor William Woods swept the neighborhood, checking roofs, but couldn’t see any obvious damage, even though Ward said he “smelled something.”
“We walked up here, and we couldn’t see anything,” Ward said less than an hour later. “There was no smoke or anything.”
The retired city firefighter was standing on the 200 block of Maple Avenue, near a house where crews from his old department and their counterparts from North Strabane Township were dispatched based on a report that smoke was coming from the roof shortly after 3 p.m.
No one was home during the fire, but city fire Chief Gerald Coleman said there were six or seven dogs in the house at the time by his count. All of the pets were unharmed.
Smoke was billowing from the roof, but Coleman said fire had only been visible in a section of one side of the house. It took about a half-hour to put it out.
“We still had some hotspots to deal with at that point, but in that half-hour, we had the bulk of the fire knocked down,” Coleman said.
Damage from the fire was confined to the attic. Still, Coleman said the two lower floors were affected by water and smoke. He estimated the damage came to $25,000 to $40,000.
The woman who rents the house didn’t want to be interviewed by a reporter.
Woods said he could hear dogs scratching while he was pounding on the locked front door of the house after the smoke started to show.
“I was beating on the doors like crazy,” he said.
He went around and tried the unlocked side door, letting out two dogs, and went in the house to make sure no one was inside.
Woods put the dogs in a shed on the property until he borrowed two leashes from another neighbor. Firefighters later rescued the remaining animals from the basement.
Coleman said he’d spoken to the state police fire marshal about the accounts of the apparent lightning strike he’d gotten from multiple neighbors, including his former colleague. He said the marshal agreed the evidence pointed to lightning as the cause.