No one injured after early riser alerts Harmar neighbors to laundromat fire; 6 apartments evacuated

Donna Bendel was already done showering and feeding her dog, Jet, before heading out for work about 3:45 a.m. Thursday when a fire broke out in the laundromat in the same building as her apartment and five others.

“I heard the front security door bang shut, but didn’t think anything of it, and finished getting my things together so I could drop off a friend who stayed over for the night while I was heading to work,” said Bendel, 61.

“When I opened the door, the whole hallway was filled with smoke,” she said. “I grabbed my dog and threw him in my car and ran back in while my friend called 911 and just started banging on doors.”

Bendel alerted the tenant in the other first-floor apartment because the woman who lives there uses a walker.

She then went to the second floor of the building, in the 100 block of Herron Avenue, to awaken the people living in the four apartments above the laundromat.

Residents already were evacuating when firefighters arrived, she said.

“A man in one of the upstairs apartments didn’t answer his door,” she said. “I know he wasn’t feeling well and thought that he maybe didn’t hear the knocks because he was sleeping soundly. So the firefighters broke in to get him out.”

By mid-morning, residents were allowed to return to their apartments and the laundromat was open for business.

No injuries were reported, and the only visible sign of a fire inside Lee’s Laundromat is a scorch mark on an inside louvered door.

While firefighters were on the scene, Bendel alerted them to the scorched carpeting outside her apartment and black smoke stains on the exterior security door.

“The hallway was dark and full of smoke, so I didn’t see the mark on the carpet at first,” she said. “But the carpet is burned, and the mark wasn’t there the day before.

“We must have been walking right through it while it was burning,” she said. “When I saw it, I thought about hearing the door slam earlier. My instincts tell me that somebody was in here and set fires in two spots. I’m no expert, but it looks suspicious to me.”

The entrance to Bendel’s apartment is on the other side of the building from the door that was burned inside the laundry facility.

Bendel said the laundromat is open around the clock, but there is no problem with loitering.

Harmar police Chief Jason Domaratz said the investigation has been turned over to the Allegheny County Fire Marshal’s Office.

No additional details were immediately available from investigators.