Family, 7 pets escape from Jeannette house fire
Jeannette house fire
A family of three and their seven pets were temporarily displaced when an electrical fire damaged their Jeannette home Wednesday evening.
Robert Rundle said he’d been gone just 15 minutes from the home in the 300 block of Margaret Street when his wife, Magi, called at about 7 p.m. with the urgent news that the house was on fire.
“She walked in, and there was fire on the carpet upstairs,” Rundle said. “She ran downstairs and got the (three) dogs out, but she couldn’t get back upstairs.”
Firefighters were at the scene in two minutes and, using less than 200 gallons of water, halted the flames as they began to spread from the Rundles’ second-story craft room into an adjacent hallway, Jeannette Fire Chief Bill Frye said.
The firefighters rescued the family’s remaining pets, two cats and two guinea pigs, from the second floor, Frye said. The cats were given oxygen and escaped with just some singed fur.
“They were here very quickly,” Rundle said of the firefighters. “If it wasn’t for them, that whole top floor would have been gone.”
The Rundles, their daughter and the pets were staying with relatives while assessing the damage to their home.
Firefighting units from Penn Borough , Claridge, Greensburg and Grandview assisted.
Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jeff at 724-836-6622, jhimler@tribweb.com or via Twitter @jhimler_news.
Jeff Himler is a TribLive reporter covering Greater Latrobe, Ligonier Valley, Mt. Pleasant Area and Derry Area school districts and their communities. He also reports on transportation issues. A journalist for more than three decades, he enjoys delving into local history. He can be reached at jhimler@triblive.com.
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