Sewickley Herald

              

The Herald
The Sewickley Valley's Home-News Weekly
VOL. 57, No. 2	SEWICKLEY, PENNSYLVANIA, THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 1963 IN TWO SECTIONS Price Ten Cents
$15,000 Blaze Damages Frame House
Fire Gets Big Start In Unoccupied House
$15,000 DAMAGE was caused to this three story frame house, at 237 Walnut Street, on Monday afternoon. The owner, Milton Coch- * ran and his family were absent at the time and the fire, which started in the basement^ had a good start before being discovered by neighbors. Sewickley firemen are seen on the
(Photo by Paul Harrison) front porch roof, extinguishing flames in the walls. All through the second and third floors, holes had to be cut in walls, floors and ceilings to reach the flames blazing in the partitions. There were no fire stops in the-partitions of the house, which is probably more than 75 years old.
Green Engineering To Study Refuse Disposal
^Engineering Studies To Be Financed From $45,000 Federal Planning Grant
Green Engineering Company, 504 Beaver Street, Sewickley, was appointed on Tuesday by the Allegheny County Commissioners-to blue-print the plans for the proposed $6,300,000 County-.wide refuse disposal system. They will advise the County on the best possible sites for die new facilities, determine what is needed to handle the County’s daily accumulation of refuse and calculate final costs of carrying out the project. The $6,300,000 estimate was worked out months ago by the County planners to complete an application for a Federal interest-free * loan to finance the engineering study, which was granted, in thè amount of $45,000 by die Community Facilities Administration last May.
The grant will expire if die survey ' isn’t completed by next July 23rd,
County Planning Chief Hugh Owen warned the Commissioners, hut they said time extensions are sometimes granted ' on such grants. County officials said it would take about a year to complete the studies.
Although talk of establishing county wide refuse disposal system has been going on for years, action has encountered difficulties. Each community wants to dump its refuse in someone else’s backyard, but the community fa which tiie dumping is done doesn’t like it and sometimes goes to court.
For the past year, the county has had a special agent on its payroll whoso duties have been to find possible sites for the proposed facilities and laying tiie groundwork for tiio start of the engineering survoy. One County official said it’s going to take a lot of selling and persuading to put the County’s program across in areas 'where the disposal facilities arc to bo located.
Green Engineering will be asked by the Commissioners to come up with recommendations that will en-ablo the County to'guarnnleo residents
of communities in which tiie facilities are to be located that there’s no danger of a nuisance being created. Under plans previously made, tile communities will still bo responsible for collecting tiie refuse and the County will operate tiie landfills or incinerators.
Edgeworth encountered trouble in. a landfill in Findlay Township and is now making a shorter haul to the now Ambridge incinerator. •
Sowickley’s incinerator is in die path of a widening of State Route 51 and will be tom down when, ns and if, tho State proceeds with the widening. Sewickley’s dump, on Glen Mitchell Road, has been tho subject of court battles over burning and has to be bull-dozed at intervals to ovemomo objections of residents in tho neighborhood.
Sewickley JYJ Elects 1963 Board Officials
The Sewickley YMCA, during December, re-organized its Board of Trustees and Board of Directors for 1963, J. Judson Brooks was elected president of the Board of Trustees and other officers of the Board include: A. Milo Shields, vice president; Warren Breithaupt, secretary and L. Thayer Lyon, treasurer. George R. Hann was re-elected to another six-year term on the Board. Other members of the Board of Trustees include Alex Barren and W. W. Collin, Jr.
R. C. McPherson was elected President of die Board of Directors and the other officers of the Board include Charles J. Ramsburg, Jr., 1st vice president; E. Stanley McPherson, 2nd vice president; Mrs, Robert Fomer, secretary and George F. Barber, treasurer.
Other Directors re-elected were: George F. Barber, 1107 Beaver Road, Osborne; Joseph Buzard, 620 Blackburn Road; Miss Margaret Holdship, Davis Lane, Osborne; John K. Om-dorff, 1115 Beavef Road, Osborne; Charles J, Ramsburg, Jr,, Henry Road, Sewickley Heights; John M. Thornton, Blackburn Road and William Wet-tacli, 659 Grove Street,
Directors who continue their terms include: W. W. Collin, III of Pine Road; Kenneth C. Cox of Blackburn Road; Alex W. Dann, 1207 Beaver Road, Osborne; George Heard, Merrl-man Road, Sewickley Heights; Dallas S, Irvine, 702 Beaver Street, Sewick-loy; David B. Oliver, II, Pink House Road, Sowickley Heights; Charles Rader, Quaker Road, Edgeworth and Michael Rea, 212 Crock Drive, Edge-worth,
What’s Doin ’
CARD PARTY
Saturday, January 12 - 8:30 p.m., public card party, at the Post Home, Lcctsdale, Sponsored by tho V.F.W. Auxiliary, $1 por person. (Adv’t)
Sunday, Jnnuary 13 - SPAGHETTI
DINNER, Lcctsdalo Vets, 4 to 10 p.m. Dave serving, members and guests invited.	(Adv’t)
Women’s Association of Shields Presbyterian Ghureh monthly LUNCHEON, January 18 at 1 P.M., Church School Building, Reservations, call Miss Seaman, 741-4272. (Adv’t)
Flames Start In Basement And Rapidly Spreads Up Partitions _ To Space Under Roof
Flames, which started from an undetermined cause in the basement of the home of Milton Cochran, 237 Walnut Street, spread quickly through the cellar and up the partitions to the space under the roof, damaging the house, furniture and clothing to the estimated extent of $15,000 on Monday afternoon.
No one was at -home at the time and the fire was racing through the partitions, which had no fire stops, when neighbors noticed smoke coming from the windows and roof. Mrs. W. F. McCrea, who lives next door at 241 Walnut Street, called the fire department at 12:25 p.m. Monday and within a few minutes two other neighbors called. As soon as Sewickley firemen arrived, Chief Baltz radioed headquarters to call in the Edgeworth Fire Department, for the entire -house was filled with heavy, rolling smoke, which was also pouring from the roof and from around the windows.	.
The first hose crews to enter the house were soon replaced by firemen wearing masks, for the smoke was chokingly thick. Working efficiently, they laid several hose lines and erected ladders to the windows of the second and thir.d floors, breaking the windows and squirting water inside to extinguish the surface fire* in the rooms. But the tough task was inside the house, where nearly every partition wall and ceiling had to be-cut open to extinguish the roaring flames in the partition and between the floors and ceilings.
The Edgeworth fire trucks laid two lines of hose and concentrated their efforts' to the rear and cellar of the three story frame house. Smoke billowed across Walnut Street and was noticeable in the center of the business district at the height of the blaze, attracting quite a large crowd to the scene.
Firemen had to open the outside walls from the front porch roof and from a ladder at the rear, when flames started to bum through tiie outside walls. False ceilings on the third floor made it almost impossible to reach the flames swirling around in the space under the slate roof. Only in tiie rear did tiie roof hum through.
When-firemen had extinguished the flames in tiie cellar and in the partitions they set' up a long ladder and carried a 2% inch hose to the roof, where they cut holes and inserted deluge nozzles which fling streams of water in a circular pattern to extinguish the flames under the roof.
Volunteers were pressed into service to help haul hose, as the firemen at one time had eight hose lines to different ladders and hose crews. An aerial ladder truck would have made the task of tiie firemen much easier, for then they could have reached the roof quickly and cut holes to allow the smoko and hot gasses to escape and allow the hoso crews to enter tiie building and find the actual flame in tho partitions. That would have boon safer for tho firemen and reduced the actual damago to tho house and its furnishings.
Several firemen were treated with oxygen for smoko inhalation and Fireman G o o r g o Edel, who stopped through a hole in the floor while groping through tho smoko with a hank of rope, was treated and Released at Sowickley Valley Hospital for a possibles sprained ankle. All the firemen treated with oxygen Were able to return to fighting tiio blaze.
No one was at homo when the blaze started. Mr, Cochran, w li o operates the Coeliran Floor Service, was working, Jane Coeliran, an 11th grade student at Quaker Valley Joint Schools, was at school and Private James Cochran of tho U,S. Marines’was staying with friends while at homo on
leave from Gamp Lejeune, N. C. Practically all the clothing and furniture in the house was either burned or badly damaged by smoke and water, and there was no insurance on the contents of the house. Insurance on the house, it is understood, is little more than the mortgage.
Fire Chief Wade Baltz, who estimated the damage at $15,000, said that the building was two-thirds destroyed and only a few articles of clothing and furniture are left. Electric power was cut off at the height of the fire and the gas turned off at the Curb by utility company employees.
Insurance adjusters and Borough Manager C. Fred Guy were to inspect the premises on Wednesday, to determine what must be doné. In investigating the cause of the fire, Fire Chief Wade Baltz found both inside and outside paint, lineoleum cement and cleaning fluid to remove the cement. The cellar was so full of water following the fire that the exact cause couldn’t be immediately determined. It could have been spontaneous combustion or the furnace, according to Chief Baltz.
Tiny Tots Swimming Lessons" At ‘V
Tiny Tot swimming Ibssons Will be held again this -winter at the Sewickley YMCA. The lessons are for 4 and 5 year olds. Classes will be held twice a week for four weeks. Both morning and afternoon sessions are scheduled. The morning session will be at 10:00 A.M. on Wednesdays and Fridays. The afternoon session Will be at 2:00 P.M. On Wednesdays and Fridays. Both sessions start on Wednesday, January 16. For more information call or stop at Sewickley YMCA.
In This Week's
HERALD