PITTSBURGH -- Three adults and a 6-month-old baby escaped in Pittsburgh’s North Side Tuesday morning from a fire investigators said was set by an arsonist.
The fire chief told Channel 4 Action News that the fire started at around 4 a.m. in a car outside a home in the 2000 block of North Charles Street in the North Side’s Perry South neighborhood.
Channel 4's Sheldon Ingram reported the flames from the car jumped to the home, setting the front of the building on fire. Neighbors told Channel 4 they heard something that sounded like an explosion.
A grandfather was on the first floor with an infant. The child's mother and grandmother were upstairs when the fire began. The residents saw the burning car and made it out of the home through a rear exit before the flames spread to the home, Ingram reported.
"My cousin's house is on fire. I said, 'What do you mean her house is on fire?' She like, 'It's on fire.' Yeah, well 'what happened?" She said 'Somebody (doused) the car and it blew up and the front of the house is on fire,'" said Sylvanius Flowers, a relative of the victims of the fire.
No injuries were reported, but the fire did substantial damage to the home.
The arson squad is continuing to investigate the fire.
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