Most of the residents displaced by a fire inside the Richard S. Caligiuri high-rise in Allentown have returned to their apartments, a building official said yesterday.
Only Deborah Acklin's apartment remained uninhabitable. The fire started inside her 10th-floor unit at 10:45 p.m. Sunday and forced firefighters to evacuate the top two floors of the 11-story building, which houses the disabled and the elderly.
Acklin said she and her grandchildren were loading dirty clothes into garbage bags so they could do laundry on the ninth floor when they smelled smoke.
"One of the (grandkids) asked if I was smoking and if the ash fell," Acklin said moments after firefighters put out the flames. "I said, 'No.' Then I went into the bedroom, and two of the garbage bags were on fire."
She said the flames were as high as 6 feet and that her grandson tried pouring buckets of water on the fire, but that only made it worse.
"It was smoky," Acklin said. "Black smoke started going out. I told the kids to get out."
One person was treated for minor smoke inhalation, said Pittsburgh deputy fire chief Dan Hennessy. Firefighters were trying to determine what caused the fire.
"When you hear 'fire,' you just want to get out," said Carren Juergen, 58, a resident of the eighth floor. "You could smell smoke everywhere."
Firefighters knocked down the flames within 20 minutes and kept the fire to the one apartment, Hennessy said.
Pittsburgh Housing Authority operates the 11-story building in the 800 block of East Warrington Avenue.
