A wave of deadly Pittsburgh-area house fires puts a spotlight on safety
Jacob Geanous / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Space heaters. Electrical outlets. Stoves. Fireplaces.
All can be deadly, especially in periods of bitter cold, fire officials have pointed out in recent days as blazes in Allegheny, Washington and Fayette counties killed seven people.
In fact, there have been so many fatal fires in Pennsylvania since the first of the year — 18 as of Friday — that the state leads the nation in such deaths at this point in 2025.
“Sadly, when the calendar turns to December, January, and February, we see horrendous tragedies associated with all the risk factors of fire,” said Lorraine Carli, vice president of outreach and advocacy at the National Fire Protection Association, headquartered in Quincy, Mass.
The latest death was reported Friday, when a fire broke out in a home on Mills Avenue in Braddock about 2:30 p.m. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office identified the victim as 77-year-old Natalie Stecki, and Pennsylvania State Police investigators were working to determine a cause of the fire.
On Thursday, a massive blaze broke out at a home in Upper St. Clair, killing a woman identified by friends and neighbors as Meredith Miller. By their accounts a sweet, loving and creative person, Ms. Miller, in her early 40s, was an assistant teacher in the nursery school at The Bible Chapel in McMurray and lived with Down syndrome. Her mother and father were injured in the blaze.
Five others were killed in house fires in Rankin and Crafton in Allegheny County, Farmington in Fayette County, where two people died, and South Strabane in Washington County between Jan. 19 and Thursday. The fires remained under investigation.
"Allegheny and the region have certainly seen an increase in fires over the last seven days,” said Matt Brown, the Allegheny County fire marshal and emergency services chief. “Within those incidents are unfortunately [four] fires [in Allegheny County] that included a fatality. All of these incidents remain under investigation, but some common concerns are seen very early in the investigation.”
They include the unsafe condition or operation of space heaters, overloaded electrical outlets, unattended cooking and use of fireplaces with flammable materials too close by.
“It has been a rough week for Southwestern Pa. ...” the Dormont Fire Department wrote in a post on social media late Thursday. Its firefighters responded to two of the fatal blazes.
In the wake of the fatalities, fire officials ramped up calls for people to be careful as they heat their homes during the cold winter months.
Space heaters especially dangerous
So far this year, at least 168 people have died in house fires across the country, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s U.S. Fire Administration.
A recent National Fire Protection Agency study found that nearly half of all U.S. home heating fires annually occur between December and February.
Space heaters and heating stoves were involved in just under a third of these fires, but accounted for over 75% of the deaths associated with them, the NFPA found.
Between 2019 and 2023, fire departments nationwide responded to an estimated 38,881 home heating fires — resulting in 432 deaths, more than 1,300 injures and $1.1 billion in property damage, according to the study.
“As temperatures go to record lows, people think about how they might augment their regular heating systems, and sometimes they do things that dramatically increase their risk of fire,” Ms. Carli said.
To lessen the risk, the NFPA recommends that all heating equipment be inspected annually. Portable heaters should be turned off when people leave a room or go to sleep, and anything that can catch fire should be kept at least three feet from any fire source, including space heaters and fireplaces.
Ovens should be used for cooking — not to combat the cold, as that could also result in a fire if flammable materials are nearby, Ms. Carli added.
“That has a lot of dangers associated with it,” she said.
But even cooking has its dangers. The American Burn Association says 47% of all home fires are caused by cooking.
The association’s annual Burn Awareness Week is Feb. 2-8, and its theme this year is “Burn Prevention Starts Where You Live.” The association has many tips on practical actions to minimize burn hazards in everyday living spaces on its website, ameriburn.org.
Smoke detectors and open doors
In its post, the Dormont Fire Department included a series of safety tips, including ensuring all homes are outfitted with working smoke detectors, with one on each floor, in each bedroom and in hallways outside bedrooms.
It urged people to sleep with their bedroom doors closed, which can slow the spread of flames and prevent smoke, heat and other dangerous gases from filling the bedroom.
And families should make an escape plan to follow in the case of a fire, and no one should ever re-enter a home once they are outside, the department said.
All this “greatly increases your chances of survival,” the department wrote.