State Street fire under investigation
<p dir="ltr"><span>An early-morning Monday fire at an unoccupied house at 1407 State St. in Chester has been ruled undetermined after a preliminary investigation.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Chester Fire Chief Marty Bert told the Herald Tribune he will ask for the assistance of the State Fire Marshal's office in determining the cause of the blaze.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>A fire investigator from the State Fire Marshal's office was reported to be on scene around 9:20 a.m.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"It's still under investigation," Bert said. "We're still looking in the back of the house in the bathroom area."</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Firefighters were initially paged at 3:41 a.m. to the report of a house on fire, but heavy smoke and wind direction made it difficult to determine where it was.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The Ellis Grove Volunteer Fire Department was also paged for mutual aid.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"The first call came in from a couple doors down," Bert said. "They thought it was down in the 1900 block (of Swanwick Street) when the actual fire was in the 1400 block (of State Street).</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"When the firemen responded, there was a lot of smoke by Swanwick and Solomon and was banked all the way down, so they didn't know exactly where it was coming from."</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The house is owned by Jerry Bahr, of Carbondale. Firefighters on scene told the newspaper that it looked like the fire had been burning "for quite some time" as it had already burned through the floor prior to their arrival.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"We believe it was burning for a little while before we got the call, yes," Bert said.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Firefighters on scene said power was connected to the house and they had to make forced entry through a locked back door to get to the fire.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The house is located less than a block north of the CFD's firehouse.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"It took a half hour to knock it down and we had to do a lot of cleanup," Bert said.</span>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The Herald Tribune will have more details as they become available.</span>