A house fire on Quarry Avenue in Seat Pleasant sent one occupant to the hospital in critical condition late Friday night, after firefighters pulled the person from the burning two-story split-level home. Flames and smoke were pouring from the rear of the house when crews arrived, and the cause of the blaze has not yet been determined.
The Prince George's County Fire and EMS Department said firefighters were called at 9:21 p.m. on Friday to reports of a house fire in the 200 block of Quarry Avenue, according to DC News Now. When crews reached the scene, they found flames and smoke billowing from the back of the home. Firefighters managed to remove one occupant from inside, and that person was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
Crews Knock Down Flames, Cause Still Unclear
Firefighters extinguished the flames at the Quarry Avenue home, and fire investigators are now working to determine what sparked the blaze. No further details on the occupant's identity or condition have been released, and the station's report does not specify whether anyone else was inside the home at the time.
The circumstances echo an earlier tragedy in the same small city. In April 2020, a house fire in Seat Pleasant killed two people, according to CBS News. Firefighters in that incident found a woman dead in the basement, while a man who had been taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries died the following day.
Lessons From a Prior Fatal Fire
Investigators in the 2020 case determined that fire began in the basement, and they worked to pin down both its cause and whether the home had working smoke alarms, per the same CBS News account. It is not known whether those questions were ever publicly resolved, and nothing in the current investigation ties the two incidents together beyond their shared location in Seat Pleasant.
For now, fire officials in Prince George's County have not released additional information about Friday night's fire beyond confirming that an investigation into its cause is ongoing.
