House fire spews fireballs and smoke, leaves tenants homeless

Pedestrians on S. Bouquet Street could smell Chris Miller’s yellow brick house before they… Pedestrians on S. Bouquet Street could smell Chris Miller’s yellow brick house before they could see it.

The smell of smoke and burned tar filled the block of S. Bouquet Street between Joncaire and Bates streets Thursday, after a fire gutted Miller’s house that morning.

“If my stuff’s going to go down in flames, that was a cool way to do it,” said Miller, who explained that, less than a minute after he and the other four men in his house escaped, the fire caught a gas pipe and spewed fireballs out of the house.

“It was nuts,” he said later that day. “Our house went up in 10 minutes — completely.”

At about 8 am Thursday morning, Miller heard a popping noise, which he said was loud enough to wake him up despite his closed door and loud fan. Emerging from his ground-floor bedroom, Miller ran downstairs to find the remains of a radio, smoldering in the bathroom.

“A pile of goo” by the time he got there, the radio had been sitting by the bathroom door, Miller said, explaining that it must have shot across the room to where he found it.

After failing to smother the fire with towels, Miller attempted to douse the flames, which had begun to lick the ceiling. Realizing that he could not put out the fire, Miller ran upstairs to alert his roommates.

The men gathered up some clothes and contacted the fire department before exiting the house, Miller said, adding that they managed to save about 20 to 30 percent of their things.

The firefighters arrived quickly and seemed to do a good job, Miller said. He also credited Pitt police with handling the situation well, noting that Pitt Police Chief Tim Delaney gave the men some money to help them get through the next few days.

Unable to explain how the fire began, Miller said he did not know what caused the radio to pop and burst into flames. The Pittsburgh Fire Bureau could not be reached for comment.

Although Miller said he did not know his landlord, Theodore Krellner, who is listed as the owner on the Allegheny County Real Estate Web site, said one of the tenants had contacted him in the late afternoon Thursday. Krellner, who has owned the house at 335 S. Bouquet Street since January 1999, according to the Web site, said the house was in good condition. He could not remember exactly the last time he was in the house, but he said it had probably been between three and six months earlier.

Krellner declined to say how many properties he owned, though he confirmed that all his properties are in South Oakland. According to the real estate Web site, Krellner owns seven, including the property that burned Thursday. Five of the properties are on Bouquet Street, and the other two are within a block of it, according to the Web site. Allegheny County’s real estate ratings of Krellner’s property conditions ranged from “fair” to “very good,” with the 335 S. Bouquet Street property receiving a “fair” rating. The building, which was built around the turn of the 20th century, was valued at $23,200 in the 2002 countywide property assessment, according to the Web site.

The fire department had not been in contact with Krellner by Thursday night, he said, adding that he did not know whether he would contact the fire department, or wait until a representative contacted him. Krellner said he did not know the cause of the fire, and that he has never had a problem with fire on his property in the past. He said he occasionally had problems, but could not specify the sort and said that, in general, things were “pretty good.”

Miller, a sophomore history and archeology major at Pitt, was living in the house this summer with Pitt student roommates, and taking summer-term classes at Pitt. All of Miller’s roommates, as well as a roommate’s friend, were staying in the house at the time of the fire. Miller and those of his roommates who needed lodging will be allowed to stay for free in Pitt’s Litchfield Tower C for one week, before they will be asked to begin paying rent or move out, Miller said.

Miller said that no one was seriously hurt, but that some of the roommates suffered from smoke inhalation, and that he had sustained a minor burn from his firefighting efforts, which he later acknowledged were probably not the wisest course of action.