A Shillington couple was displaced by a weekend fire sparked by a propane weed-burning torch, fire officials said Monday.<\/p>\n
The blaze was discovered shortly after 1:30 p.m. Saturday in the first block of Kings Boulevard. Firefighters arrived to find the rear deck ablaze, with flames already extended to the eve of the one-story home, Shillington Fire Company Deputy Chief David Bentz said.<\/p>\n
The fire probably started earlier but went unnoticed, he said, adding that around the time the initial calls came in, the ash-colored column of smoke could be seen from as far away as the Pagoda atop Mount Penn.<\/p>\n
It is believed that the fire was sparked after the torch was put down. The still-hot tip likely ignited some combustible material, and it expanded quickly once the polycarbonate decking material caught on fire, Bentz said.<\/p>\n
The man was taken to Reading Hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation, Bentz said. A cat was rescued from the home.<\/p>\n
A second alarm was struck to ensure there were enough personnel and apparatus to put out the fire. Crews from as far as Exeter Township and Wernersville responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bulk of the fire was outside, but it got into the attic space,\u201d said Bentz, adding that the home is temporarily uninhabitable due to the damage.<\/p>\n
A damage estimate was unavailable.<\/p>\n
An American Red Cross team responded to handle any emergency needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Shillington couple was displaced by a weekend fire sparked by a propane weed-burning torch, fire officials said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-290971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290971","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=290971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}