A fire was reported in a Perry home shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday, and the additional claim that someone was trapped in an upper room of the house brought a rapid response from the Perry Volunteer Fire Department, which quickly controlled the blaze.
The caller said “the fire may have a 27-year-old male trapped in the upstairs of the residence,” said Perry Volunteer Fire Department Chief Chris Hinds.
Hinds said heavy smoke was billowing from the front of the house at 1305 10th St. when First Assistant Fire Chief Brian Eiteman arrived at 8:58 a.m., the first firefighter on the scene.
Eiteman and an interior attack crew of firefighters entered through the front door and “knocked down the fire in the living room and kitchen on the ground floor,” Hinds said. They “then started working their way up the staircase, which was also on fire, attempting to reach the upstairs bedrooms.”
The three-bedroom house, built in 1900 and owned by Jose Diaz and Dolores Cornejo Vasques of Perry, was being rented by Cheri Sue Hemphill.
By the time the interior attack crew began fighting its way up the stairs, “all three residents of the house had been located and accounted for” by officers of the Perry Police Department, Hinds said. “It was determined that there was no one else in the residence and no one was trapped in the upstairs as initially reported,” he said.
There were no injuries in the incident.
Hinds said there was some indication the fire might have started in the stairwell, but he said the investigation is ongoing, and a cause has not been determined.
Firefighters from the Perry and Dawson stations responded, he said.
Much more information and detail in this report than what was reported on our “local” radio station.