PENN HILLS, Pa. — A huge fire destroyed a home in Penn Hills early Tuesday morning.
The fire broke out at the home in the 900 block of Sixth Street around 12:0a a.m.
When the fire department arrived on the scene, they said the house was fully engulfed in flames.
Neighbors tell Channel 11 the man who lives inside the home made it out safely with his dog. The first thing he did was run next door to wake his neighbors up, since their house was also on fire.
“This was one of the ones you call a ‘surround and drown.’ Like, you don’t really attack it as much because it was so bad,” said Michael Garia, neighbor and retired firefighter.
He watched as the fire consumed his neighbor’s home.
“We looked out and you could see flames. We thought he was just cooking or something in the back. Next thing you know it just kept getting bigger and bigger. And then all of a sudden‚ it seemed like it just went like this, ‘woosh,’” Garia said.
The Penn Hills Fire Marshal said one reason the fire tore through the home so quickly was because the front door was left open.
“That sort of drafted it. The air sucked it through. Then it went up into the third floor,” Garia said.
Smoke was billowing out of the roof. The flames also tore through the siding on the home next door.
“I lived here for a few years. I got close with the neighbors and the tenant is actually a friend of mine. We work together and it’s just sad to see that he doesn’t have a place to live right now,” said Michael DiCocco, the property owner.
The Penn Hills Fire Marshal believes it’s all because of a cigarette butt.
He said the tenant told him he was smoking on the back porch, went to sleep and then woke up to the smell of smoke.
The house is a total loss. No one was hurt.
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