A North Heidelberg Township home was gutted in an overnight fire that began when a car caught on fire in the driveway, a state police fire marshal said.<\/p>\n
The fire on Gernert Lane, which is off Dynamite Road near Old Church Road, was reported by a neighbor shortly before 1 a.m. Friday.<\/p>\n
The Bernville Fire Company chief arrived to find the elevated-rancher home fully aflame. The home was determined to be unoccupied.<\/p>\n
The initial crews laid 1,000 feet of 5-inch hose line.<\/p>\n
Bernville firefighters were assisted by crews from 13 fire companies in western and northern Berks and eastern Lebanon County, with a tanker brigade shuttling water to the scene. Crews needed about an hour to control the flames<\/p>\n
Some crews remained on the scene for three hours, extinguishing hot spots and mopping up.<\/p>\n
Trooper Corey Heimbach of the state police Troop L fire marshal unit determined the fire originated around a sedan that was parked in the driveway. The precise cause of the fire hasn\u2019t been determined, but Heimbach said no criminal activity is suspected.<\/p>\n
No one was injured.<\/p>\n
The home was deemed a total loss, with damages estimated at more than $400,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A North Heidelberg Township home was gutted in an overnight fire that began when a car caught on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,182,139,43984,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-294167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-north-heidelberg-township","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\/294167","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=294167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}