Monessen blaze damages 2 houses

By KRISTIE LINDEN
klinden@yourmvi.com

Monessen firefighters were on the job again Wednesday morning when a fire was reported on Ninth Street in the city that involved two houses.
It was the second this week, the fourth in nine days for the city’s two fire departments and the mutual aid departments that have helped Monessen weather this situation.
Municipal Chief Delmar Hepple said he can only remember one other time when it was close to having this kind of activity in the city.
“When I first came in, in the early ’90s, we had a spree like this when we were pretty busy,” Hepple said. “But since then, I haven’t seen anything quite this busy.”
Monessen police Capt. Dave Yuhasz said all of the fires over the past month that have not been ruled accidental and are still undetermined, are still under active investigation.
In fact, Yuhasz was reviewing new evidence from a fire at 14 Reed Ave. that was collected from surveillance footage with help from the state attorney general’s office when the call for the fire on Ninth Street came in around 10:30 Wednesday morning.
“We’re just trying to determine what happened,” Yuhasz said. “There are people talking and speculating, but we just have to find out what caused it.”
Toward that end, Yuhasz said residents should keep in mind that open burning is prohibited within city limits. Anything bigger than a small firepit — such as the kind of pit that could be bought at Home Depot or Lowe’s — is prohibited by ordinance. So if anyone sees a fire larger than that, they should report it.
Yuhasz also said that because it’s undetermined at this point if any of the fires have been the result of arson, the police need residents to report anything suspicious or “anything out of the ordinary.”
“We need help from the community to help us protect the community,” Yuhasz said.
Hepple said the two houses were both on fire when crews arrived and it was already a pretty big fire at that point.
The chief said the fire marshal is working to determine which house caught fire first. The house at 639 Ninth St. was being remodeled but the house next door at 641 has been vacant for years.
The brown house at 637 Ninth St. is occupied, Hepple said, so the priority quickly became protecting that house and the belongings inside.
“The goal was to save the brown house so we put a fire stop on the yellow one (639 Ninth St.) and protected the one on the end,” Hepple said.
The chief said his firefighters are “really getting it handed to them, but they’re holding up. The fatigue will set in eventually.”
He called in a number of neighboring departments because when there is a daylight fire and volunteer firefighters are at work, it’s not easy to predict how many personnel will show up with each truck.
In addition to Monessen No. 1 and Monessen Hilltop, Charleroi, Carroll Township, North Belle Vernon, Webster, Sutersville, Donora and Washington Township volunteer fire departments responded to the scene with Mon Valley EMS and Monessen police. Stockdale Volunteer Fire Department covered the Monessen stations while they were on scene.
Hepple said it’s likely the mutual aid firefighters, who he said are very faithful about coming to help, are getting fatigued by the number of fires as well.
“It’s morning, noon and night now, you don’t get that time to recoup,” Hepple said. “But, we’re holding up pretty well right now.”
The chief said the fire marshal is in the preliminary stages of investigating Wednesday’s fire.