Family asleep when smoke spotted
A house fire in the city Wednesday had all the conditions for a major disaster: The occupants were unaccounted for as big, dark clouds of smoke seeped from the front of the home where sacks of wood pellets were stacked underneath the porch.
“We were up all night watching TV, so we were asleep when the neighbor came over to the back door and woke us up by pounding on the door,” said Beverly Smith, who lives in the home on the 100 block of Third Avenue. “When I got up, I just saw smoke everywhere. I grabbed my husband and we ran out.”
Around 20 first responders were called. Officials raised the fire's status to a second alarm, and as Butler City firefighters tapped a nearby fire hydrant, the water main broke, ushering a surge of water that buckled the street.
“The situation turned out to be not as bad as we initially thought,” said Fire Chief Christopher Switala, who noted that nobody was hurt in the fire. “There were a lot of things working in the family's favor. A few more minutes and it would've been a grave situation.”
The first thing Switala did when he got there was check the rear of the structure, where he saw Smith and her husband, William, walking out of the house with the help of neighbors.And the fire, it turned out, looked worse than it was. It only burned the front facade.“Luckily, we had it knocked down enough that we didn't need a second hydrant when the water main broke,” Switala said.He didn't know what caused the main to break. Workers with Pennsylvania American Water Co. at the scene did not comment.The part of the street where the water main broke was marked with crumbled asphalt, causing it to be closed to traffic.Switala said they don't know how the fire started.Butler City, VA Butler Healthcare Fire Department, Butler Township Fire District and Butler Ambulance Service responded to the scene.
