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Two fires trouble, puzzle Girard neighborhood
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Flames shoot into the air at 118 Lizzie St. in Girard. It was the second of two fires at adjacent, vacant houses this week. Authorities call them “suspicious.”
By Robert Guttersohn
GIRARD
The remnants of the second of two house fires in less than 24 hours near South Market Street still billowed smoke Thursday.
Girard Fires
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And the neighborhood remained in shock.
“My son is scared to fall asleep,” Fanny Chacon said of her 11-year-old son.
Chacon lives with her mother, Josephine Bach, and that property was adjacent to both house fires.
Tuesday night’s fire, a vacant home at 430 Market St., started about midnight, fire officials said.
Wednesday’s fire, a vacant home at 118 Lizzie St., began less than 24 hours later about 8 p.m.
Residents described the second fire as much more intense. Small flames still jumped out from the basement beneath the collapsed structure Thursday. Debris, smoke and flames spread to the railroad tracks that run parallel to Market Street.
Both the police and fire departments said Thursday the investigation is ongoing, and the cause is unknown.
“They are both suspicious in nature because they are both vacant” Fire Chief Kenneth Bornemiss said Thursday. “We just have to follow up on some leads from what the neighbors have told us.”
No injuries were reported.
“These old houses go up like that,” said Frank Simone with a snap.
He grew up in the neighborhood and returned Thursday to help the Bachs clean around their house.
During Tuesday’s fire, residents said a neighbor that lives farther down the street alerted them.
That night, Chacon said she had gone to bed early in her second-floor bedroom. In the living room, her son and a friend played video games when there was a pounding at the door.
A neighbor told them to get out of the house because the house next door had caught on fire. When her son said his mother was sleeping upstairs, the neighbor sprinted up the stairs, woke her and together they exited their home.
“I felt the heat from the flames on my face,” Chacon said.
Joseph Christopher, who lives across the street from both fires, said he was watching television Tuesday when a neighbor also pounded on his door. He and his family exited, and he took some pictures which he shared with The Vindicator.
Girard firefighters said the first fire was under control by 4 a.m.
Wednesday afternoon, Chacon drove her son to football practice while her mother, Bach, stayed home to garden. After Bach was done and as she walked to her car, she turned and saw the second house already engulfed in flames.
She waved a neighbor down to call 911.
By the time Chacon and Carlos returned, firefighters had blocked access to their end of Market Street.
“All we saw were big balls of flames,” Chacon said. “My kid jumps out of the car screaming for his grandma. We had no idea what had happened to her.”
Christopher said he was playing Monopoly when they heard the sirens. When he walked outside, he couldn’t believe when he saw it was right next to the other house.
The Bach house survived the second fire, and the fire department said the blaze was contained by 12 a.m.
Thursday, the family swept the ash from the paths next to their home while charred remnants of the second home still sent pillars of smoke into the air.
Several people drove their cars slowly around the cul-de-sac looking at what remained of the two homes.
But to the Bach family and others, the fires were only a sign of how the “tightly knit” neighborhood has declined.
“Kids come down the street and play in this field,” Chacon said while walking through her back yard, adjacent to where the ground slopes down to the railroad tracks. Stacks of roofing tiles, pieces of old fence and trash are piled up in the overgrown grass next to the tracks.
“I have no idea where all this came from,” she said. “Kids played in the [second fire-destroyed] house all the time. They’d break the windows.
“I kept saying I’ll call the cops eventually.”