House fire in Crafton leaves 1 woman dead, man hospitalized
CRAFTON, Pa. (KDKA) -- One woman is dead and a man is recovering at the hospital after a fire off Elmwood Street Monday morning in Crafton, where firefighters worked for hours battling flames in frigid temperatures.
Crafton Fire Chief Mike Crown said they got called to respond to Elmwood by McMunn around 5:15 a.m.
When they arrived, they found flames shooting out of the roof of a home with smoke billowing out.
"One occupant was on the front porch, [and] said that there [were] two possibly entrapped," Crown said.
Crown said they quickly started searching.
"There was a lot of confusion at the initial part of the scene," Crown said.
They soon learned one of the two unaccounted for was at a house off the property.
As they continued to look for the other person, Crown says EMS crews transported the man on the front porch, who was around 40 years old, to the hospital. Their condition is unknown.
Eventually, they found a woman who didn't make it out.
She was later identified as 71-year-old Christine Shutt.
To help, they called in for backup and had about 50 to 60 firefighters working together.
Crown said it took them more than three hours to get the flames under control after parts of the building collapsed. The bitter cold also created challenging conditions when it came to manpower.
"You've got to rotate the guys, once they're out they've already been, you know, through a lot of heat and they're wet and now they're getting freezing cold, we've got to get them in rehab," Crown said.
They set up a warming tent and had a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus on the scene to assist.
They also had to deal with a frozen hydrant.
"We had to hit hydrants twice as far away to get the water into the scene," Crown said.
At the same time, there were slick conditions on the roads. Thankfully, they had no reports of injuries from first responders, despite some slips and falls.
A cause remains under investigation by the state fire marshal.
