ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A three-alarm fire that began around 9:34 a.m. Saturday in Allentown has displaced five families including eight children, according to the Allentown Fire Department.<\/p>\n
Fire officials say crews were dispatched to the 500 block of Allen Street for a house fire, with initial reports by a 911 caller of people trapped and fire coming from the roof.<\/p>\n
According to a fire department news release, approximately five minutes after crews arrived the Battalion Chief requested a second alarm bringing two additional engine companies, County Air 1, and a second truck company. Ten minutes after the second alarm, the incident commander requested a third alarm bringing County units into the city to backfill the fire stations as well as additional units to the scene.<\/p>\n
“It was chaos. So many police, so many from the fire department. They actually had to block all the streets,” said Eddy Osario, a resident in the neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Osorio describes the moment a fire broke out down the street from his home on the 500 block of Allen Street in Allentown around 9:30 in the morning.<\/p>\n
“The fire just started to spread rapidly,” he said.<\/p>\n
Paramedics and police officers assisted the residents and secured the area allowing the fire department to operate safely. The streets department assisted fire-police with barricades and brought salt to the scene to clear up ice around fire equipment.<\/p>\n
There were a total of 5 homes affected by the fire with 5 families being displaced. The American Red Cross assisted 20 adults and 7 children who stayed warm in a Lanta bus that was brought to the scene. Red Cross volunteers provided care, comforat and financial assistance to the families affected.<\/p>\n
Osorio says he saw people being evacuated from their homes.<\/p>\n
“Especially around these holidays you know what I mean. You feel sad. You feel bad for what’s occurring now because now.. it’s just imagine what they have to go through,” said Osario.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Restoration crews have been brought in to board up the homes.<\/p>\n
“I mean I guess whatever we can do to help those families out you know what I mean. If we can get that, that would be amazing, you know what I mean. Just figure out how to help people especially around this time around the holidays because it’s very difficult. I can’t even imagine that,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fire department says there have been no reported injuries to emergency responders or civilians.<\/p>\n
The cause of the fire is unknown and is actively being investigated by the Fire Marshal division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A three-alarm fire that began around 9:34 a.m. Saturday in Allentown has displaced five families…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,805],"class_list":{"0":"post-77364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-allentown-area","13":"tag-lehighvalley"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77364","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=77364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}