according to the United States Fire Administration<\/a>. Texas is second so far this year with 24, followed by New York State with 22.<\/p>\nWe’ve done reporting on six of the deaths in our viewing area.<\/p>\n
It was just a few weeks back when a father and two young daughters died in Clymer, Indiana County.<\/p>\n
Additionally, one person died from a fire in the City of Pittsburgh, one died in Braddock, and another died in Penn Township, Westmoreland County.<\/p>\n
“You feel terrible for the family,” Chief Schmidt said. \u00a0“Their loved ones that are left behind \u2013 that have to carry the weight of that burden.”<\/p>\n
In 2025, Pennsylvania had the most civilian home fire deaths out of any state, with 131. New York was second with 114, and Texas was third with 104.<\/p>\n
California had 100 deaths in 2025. Ohio had 84, and West Virginia had 18.<\/p>\n
Firefighters have talked about electrical issues being part of the problem with more fires popping up. Schmidt said homeowners can make sure proper electricians are doing all their wiring.<\/p>\n
The chief said they’re seeing more and more fires sparked by lithium-ion batteries now too, because of the increasing number of devices in homes that are using them.<\/p>\n
“It’s another thing that we have to combat and something we were never trained for \u2013 but now we are starting to get a lot of training on that,” Schmidt said.<\/p>\n
The chief says you want to make sure any devices with lithium-ion batteries are stored properly.<\/p>\n
“You just have to make sure that whatever you’re doing, you’re watching how it’s powered, where it’s at, and not to leave those devices unattended,” Schmidt says.<\/p>\n
One of the things you should be doing to prevent fires is checking your smoke detectors, Schmidt added.<\/p>\n
You should be testing them monthly, he said.<\/p>\n
In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We’re not even two months into 2026, and the Keystone State is already leading the nation in fire-related…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9521,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-117270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-fatal-fire","9":"tag-pennsylvania","10":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","11":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}