Butler House Fire Leaves 2 Dead
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BUTLER (KDKA) – Two people were killed in an early Monday morning fire in Butler County.
According to officials at the scene, the fire started around 2 a.m. in the 300 block of East Brady Street.
The fire marshal said a man was found in a hall, while a woman was found in a bed. Extreme hoarding conditions were also found inside the home.
"It's kind of a lesson learned for anybody who is seeing this that it does make a very dangerous situation inside the building when somebody is a hoarder and it was like literally...The basement was filled from floor to ceiling," Butler Fire Chief Kevin McAfee said.
Chief McAfee said this fire might have ended differently, but his crews couldn't get inside.
"We tried to push the door open and it would only open a couple feet, subsequently we knew there was a lot of material back there and you could see through the windows at that point as well that there was a lot of materials stacked inside," McAfee said.
George Walter and his wife, Linda, moved into the home 18 years ago. George's sister said they all knew they collected too much stuff.
"I knew it was overloaded because they just kept shoving it up everywhere and I mean it's really close inside there," Susan Walter Jefferson said.
Jefferson doesn't know why her brother and sister-in-law packed the house floor to ceiling, but wants people to remember them as loving and hardworking couple.
"My brother was more or less a kid. He really never grew up which is probably why he married an older woman because they were happy together they were a real good couple together," Jefferson said.
Jefferson will now prepare funeral arrangements for the couple, as the fire marshal investigates the true cause of the fire.
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