Investigators are now looking into the cause of two separate fires in neighboring homes in Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar neighborhood. One of them killed a man and sent a woman to the hospital.
When Shaya Delts walked out of her home and down the street on Wednesday morning, she didn’t expect to see flames coming from another home on Apple Street.
“I had called 911 because I thought it was the house from last night at 2 o’clock.”
The Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire Battalion came back to the street within minutes to a separate fire at the house next door.
A man was killed and a woman was injured when a home along Apple Street in Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar neighborhood went up in flames.
KDKA Photojournalist Brian Smithmyer
“Ended up leaving here at four in the morning. Two hours later, we have a fire on the outside in a terrain that doesn’t make much sense,” said Battalion Chief Ed Farley.
Chief Farley said one house was abandoned and collapsed in the back, with no electricity or utilities set up.
“That house is out here. Some of them need to be torn down. It’s dangerous for our guys,” he said.
It’s a dangerous climb for firefighters, who found a similar situation with run-down stairs and more debris hours earlier at the house to the right of this one.
“Getting to a lot of these houses, especially in the high sides, is difficult to get our lines in place,” Chief Farley said.
At that home, Farley’s firefighters saw three floors covered in flames. Firefighters pulled one man through a window, but he died at the scene.
“It was sad because I know there were two older people that lived in that house, and I saw she made it out, so I was wondering if he was still in there,” Delts said.
The woman was taken to the hospital.
“Guys did a great job. Like I said, they went in, knocked down the fire. Found the victim. And got them out in a really quick fashion,” Chief Farley said of his firefighters.
The fire marshal is investigating the cause of both fires.
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