Overheated circuits brought fire crews out to a home at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Fair Street in Kittanning in the wee hours of Christmas morning.
While Santa was delivering presents around the globe, the three Kittanning fire departments were called out to a residence at 424 Fair Street in Kittanning Borough.
9-1-1 dispatchers said the call came in at 2:18 AM Christmas morning. Kittanning Borough Fire Marshal Earl “Buzz” Kline said it was a good thing the family was still awake. Electrical circuits were overheating from too many portable electric heaters in use.
“All they heated with was electric heaters,” Kline said. “There is no other heat source in the house. If they had not still been up, it could have been a lot worse and have caught the entire house on fire.”
Kline described the situation when firefighters arrived.
“Whenever we got there, we used a thermo-imaging camera on the receptacle and it was reading 360 degrees. It was glowing red and smoking. Once we cut the power to it, it started to cool down and was back to normal. That will all have to be addressed before they turn the breakers back on.”
Kline said the problem wasn’t limited to one circuit.
“We shut the breakers off and I advised them to get an electrician in there to straighten things out. One breaker had the living room on where the heaters and TV were. Then there was another breaker that was arcing in the electrical box itself.”
Kline said the family had other places to stay last night.
Kline said the building used to be separated into an apartment upstairs and a beauty shop downstairs, but had been remodeled to just be one residence now.