PITTSBURGH — A woman who was burning palms from Palm Sunday caught her house on fire Monday morning, Channel 11 was told. Flames spread to the house next door.
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The fire broke out around 10:30 a.m. along Rinne Street in the city’s Arlington neighborhood.
“You couldn’t even see in the house. There was so much smoke,” said Brian Milligan a painter with Pittsburgh Painting, and one of the men who rushed inside.
Channel 11 News obtained exclusive cell phone footage of what the home looked like this morning when crews were called, it showed smoke billowing from the rooftop.
When emergency crews arrived at Rhinne Street in Arlington, two homes were fully engulfed with flames and they found a woman in her 70s suffering from multiple burns to her arm.
She was rushed to the hospital and will be okay. No one was in the home next door.
“We smelled the smoke and saw the smoke so we just kind of reacted,” said Brian Grilli another one of the men who rushed inside.
Three men working on a home up the street saw the flames and quickly jumped in to help kicking down the door. The men told Channel 11 that it looked like she may have been burning palms from a Palm Sunday service.
“She was stuck in her living room kind of in shock and didn’t want to come out so we had to carry her out,” Grilli said.
After carrying her out, they went back in for her dogs. One of them, a beagle, did not survive the fire.
The men said shortly after they came back out for the second time, they heard a loud boom.
“Long after everybody was out, maybe a propane tank or something, just [went] poof,” Milligan said.
Authorities have confirmed this was not a house explosion.
The woman is recovering from her injuries and officials confirmed the fire is under investigation.
A GoFundMe has been set up for the woman. Click here to donate.
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