Blawnox Woman, 79, Dies After Fire At Senior High-Rise

BLAWNOX, Pa. - THE PITTSBURGH CHANNEL.com

A 79-year-old woman who lived in the Blawnox Manor apartments died Monday morning, four days after a fire broke out at the senior high-rise building.

Jean Guentner was pronounced dead in the burn unit at West Penn Hospital. The Allegheny County medical examiner said an autopsy will be done later in the day to determine the cause of death.

Calls came in for a report of fire at the apartments in the 700 block of Centre Avenue shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday. About 90 people were forced to leave the building.

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Images From The Scene

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Melanie Casey said she ran up the stairs, trying to help her friend in another apartment.

"I put my back to the wall and tried to scoot down the hall, because I could hear her, but I couldn't get there," Casey said.

Two Blawnox police officers arrived but they also could not get to the woman's apartment, so they went to the balcony one floor above and saw her trapped on the balcony below.

"They pulled a hose out of the house cabinet up there and literally go out on the sixth-floor balcony and squirt the hose down on the fifth-floor balcony," county Fire Marshal Bob Full said.

Nine fire companies, four police departments and five EMS agencies responded to the call, dispatchers reported.

Channel 4 Action News' Ari Hait reported firefighters carried some people down stairwells and helped others off their balconies onto ladders.

Smoke from the fire "was black and it was thick brown and it was coming in my apartment and I didn't know what to do," Linda Kelley said.

Most residents were awakened by the fire alarms, Hait reported. Residents told Channel 4 Action News that the smoke filled the building on almost all the floors.

"Very scary. Oh God, I was scared," one of the residents said.

"All the people screaming. There was maximum chaos here," another resident said.

“I opened my entry door and I saw all the smoke. I didn't know what the fire was, it smelled like it was electrical. So I was going to go back to sleep. But then I looked out here and I saw all the lights, so, I decided I better not go back to sleep. I might be sleeping for a long time,” said resident Rich Alvino.

Many of those displaced by the fire took shelter at the nearby Hoboken Presbyterian church, Hait reported.

Crews called the fire under control in less than two hours, but battled smoke conditions for several more hours, reports said.

WTAE Channel 4's news exchange partners at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that

the fire was determined to have been started by a cigarette

.

For some people, it was the second time their building had been evacuated in as many years. Two years ago, a fire was sparked by an ashtray emptied into a wastebasket.

"After three fires since I've been here, I hope that they take action and that they ban cigarettes from the building completely," said Nancy Fisher, who lives in the apartment building.

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