{"id":58380,"date":"2025-12-11T21:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T21:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/58380\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T21:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T21:51:07","slug":"candles-led-to-fatal-fire-in-storage-units-reading-fire-marshal-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/58380\/","title":{"rendered":"Candles led to fatal fire in storage units, Reading fire marshal says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Oct. 26 fire in a self-storage unit that killed a 24-year-old woman in Reading\u2019s 18th Ward was determined to be accidental, city Fire Marshal Jeremy Searfoss said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The fire marshal\u2019s office determined that the use of candles near ordinary combustibles in the storage unit caused the fire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur deepest sympathies are with the family and loved ones of this young lady,\u201d Searfoss said.<\/p>\n<p>Kyra C. Bernstel died in the fire in the first block of North Angelica Street, about a half-block east of Lancaster Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>Reading firefighters discovered her<a href=\"https:\/\/www.readingeagle.com\/2025\/10\/31\/victim-of-reading-storage-unit-fire-identified\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> body<\/a> after putting out a predawn blaze that engulfed a row of lockers.<\/p>\n<p>Searfoss said video footage confirmed what other people who rented lockers told investigators \u2014 that Bernstel had been using her unit as a temporary residence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously, that type of building is not designed for humans to occupy,\u201d Searfoss said. \u201cThere\u2019s no bathroom facilities, no running water, there\u2019s no electric.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added it\u2019s common for the fire department to encounter conditions indicating people have been living unit storage lockers or buildings not designed as residences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oct. 26 fire in a self-storage unit that killed a 24-year-old woman in Reading\u2019s 18th Ward was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,182,139,28,736,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-58380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","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\/58380","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=58380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}