The cause of a fire that left a woman dead in her Stouchsburg home last week remains undetermined after a multiday investigation, the state police fire marshal\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n
The fire was discovered Friday about 2 p.m. in the 100 block of Main Street in the Marion Township village near the Lebanon County line. A neighbor reported seeing black smoke from the house.<\/p>\n
Bystanders indicated an elderly female was likely inside. Firefighters battled heat and low visibility, searching for the occupant.<\/p>\n
The Marion Township Fire Company chief requested a second alarm. Crews from Berks and Lebanon counties responded.<\/p>\n
Hampered by poor visibility and excessive clutter, firefighters eventually found the woman dead in the living room of the two-story home.<\/p>\n
Crews needed about 45 minutes to control the blaze. Damage was estimated at $300,000.<\/p>\n
The state police fire marshal unit determined the fire originated in the living room, but investigators have been unable to pinpoint a cause so the fire is classified as undetermined.<\/p>\n
The Berks County coroner\u2019s office is working to positively identify the woman, whose body was burned beyond recognition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cause of a fire that left a woman dead in her Stouchsburg home last week remains undetermined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,182,21554,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-74685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-local-news","tag-marion-township","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\/74685","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=74685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}