Connie Zollers said she'd started a fire in her fireplace and had left her house for 15 minutes. When she came back to the house at 501 Fulton St. in Hanover, things didn't look good. "I saw smoke coming from where it shouldn't be," she said, motioning to what was left of the top of her chimney. The 3 p.m. fire was the first chimney fire in Hanover Borough this winter, said Fire Commissioner James Roth. Firefighters from Hanover and Penn Township responded and had the small fire quickly under control. Black smoke was pouring from the top and sides of the chimney, which was a metal pipe surrounded by plywood and vinyl siding. Using the Hanover Fire Department ladder truck, firefighters quickly got on the roof of the small two-story house and used an axe to bust the vent off the top of the chimney. A fire extinguisher first was used to battle the smoke, but a small hose eventually was brought out to douse the entire pipe. Likely the wood burned in the chimney had built up what is known as creosote - tar and other chemicals from the smoke - and caught fire, Roth said. "When that fire gets going inside the chimney, it can get up to 800 or 1,000 degrees," he said. That fire then spreads beyond the pipe, causing the fire. Firefighters used infrared cameras to examine the external chimney pipe from the basement to the roof, as well as squirting water down the structure. Zollers said that as soon as she saw the smoke, she called 911 and rushed into the house. She closed the flue and did what she could to ensure the fire could not get any more air from inside. There were others with her, but everyone was able to exit the house quickly and no one was hurt. She laughed ironically when she was told the chimney fire was the first in the borough this season. "Figures it would be," she said.
Story and photos from: Eveningsun.com