SHAMOKIN - Emergency responders extinguished a small kitchen fire Thursday afternoon in an apartment building on North Shamokin Street.
Bruce Rogers, chief of Shamokin Fire Bureau, said an oven mitt hanging above a stove fell onto an electric burner and then fell between the stove and the wall. It caught the wall on fire along with some debris on the floor.
The fire was extinguished minutes later by Patrolman Ray Siko II, who used a fire extinguisher.
Rogers called the fire accidental.
Elizabeth McFadden, a tenant of the second floor apartment at 224 N. Shamokin St., said she had turned the stove on before walking into another room to set up her 14-month-old daughter, Gianna, to watch TV. That's when she heard a smoke alarm.
"By the time I came back," which she said wasn't long, "the smoke alarm was going off and there was smoke in the kitchen," McFadden said.
She said she threw water on the flames at the stove before calling 911.
McFadden said she has lived in her apartment since August with Gianna and her husband, Joe.
Emergency personnel were dispatched to the three-unit apartment building at 2:52 p.m.
Shamokin Police Chief Ed Griffiths and officers Siko and William Zalinski were the first to arrive.
"I went into the kitchen and the wall was burning. I dumped an extinguisher on it and went out to help (Griffiths and Zalinski) evacuate the building," Siko said.
Members of Shamokin Fire Bureau and Coal Township Fire Department responded, running hose from nearby hydrants and engines. Those hoses were quickly turned off as the fire was deemed extinguished.
A thermal imaging unit found the wall by the stove to be hot, and firefighters opened the wall to be sure there were no flames spreading inside, Rogers said.
Mark Getz was in the first-floor apartment at the time the fire broke out. He said he was in the bathroom when he heard an alarm and heard someone shout that the building was on fire.
Griffiths carried two children belonging to Getz's girlfriend from the first-floor apartment - Averue Roeder, 3, and Jayden Roeder, 4 - as Getz followed the officer outside with a pair of dogs.
The apartment building, which several emergency responders complimented for intricate and attractive old-time interior woodwork, is owned by Charles Hagan, of Philadelphia, said a man identified as the building's property manager.
The building has a unit on each of three floors, and all three are occupied.
It's believed the third-floor tenants weren't home at the time of the fire.