The Daily Pennsylvanian is a student-run nonprofit.

Please support us by disabling your ad blocker on our site.

4xrbpa3o
A house at 41st and Walnut streets was gutted this weekend after a fire swept through it. The source of the blaze is still unclear.

College junior Raha Mozaffari awoke to news she never expected on Saturday morning.

Away visiting friends, she received word that a fire had broken out at her residence at 210 S. 41st St. at about 6:15 on Saturday morning.

"It was the worst wake-up call I've ever gotten," Mozaffari said. "It's shocking."

The fire - in which no one was injured - gutted the house and forced residents in both the 210 building and the neighboring 212 building to evacuate in the early-morning hours.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, said a spokesperson from the Office of the Fire Marshal, which is responsible for investigating the cause of fires.

Eight Penn students live in the 210 residence, and eight Penn students and one Drexel student live in the 212 residence, Division of Public Safety officials said.

The Philadelphia Fire Department responded to the fire and alerted the University of Pennsylvania Police, which joined the fire department at the scene, according to a statement from DPS officials.

The fire was extinguished within an hour, officials said.

Landlord Robert McCafferty said the firemen on the scene believed the fire originated in the kitchen of the second floor, though Lt. William Johnson, the case's main investigator for the Fire Marshal's office, still needs to interview several residents to determine the cause of the fire, the spokesperson said.

As for the students affected by the fire, residents of the 210 building stayed at the University City Sheraton Saturday night.

The students will receive assistance from the Vice Provost for University Life in finding more-permanent housing, DPS spokeswoman Karima Zedan said.

Residents living on the first two floors of the 212 building were allowed to return to the house Saturday, though the third floor of the house remains "uninhabitable," McCafferty said, due to roof damage incurred when the fire was being extinguished.

The 210 building has also been "locked and secured for safety reasons," McCafferty said, adding that renovations will begin today, and that a timetable has not been set for its rebuilding.

Residents of the 210 building met with an insurance representative yesterday and gave the representative a "wish list" of items they would like recovered from the building, Zedan said.

The 210 residents are not currently allowed in the building, so the insurance representative will retrieve the items, Zedan said.

The apartment building at 208 S. 41st St. also sustained minor water damage from the firemen's hoses, though no residents were displaced as a result of the fire, McCafferty added.

As could be expected, the blaze left those in the surrounding area extremely distressed.

"I was on vacation visiting my friends, and I don't want to think about what I have to do next when I come back," Mozaffari said. "I didn't expect it would happen to me at all."

Other residents of the 210 building declined to discuss the incident.

College sophomore Daisy Riquelme, who lives in an apartment in the 208 building, expressed similar sentiments.

said. "I'm three feet away from that building."

Comments powered by Disqus

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.