We had another fire in my end of town, BTW. Third fire on Bishop in the last year, second one on that block. A badly run-down rental duplex on one of the worst blocks in town. Pretty crowded area, they couldn't fit all of the fire trucks close enough to bring all the equipment to bear. Ironically enough, all of these fires have been within a block and a half of the Undine fire station. I wasn't the only looky-loo, half the town was crowded around rubbernecking.

Now that I look at the local paper, I see that those additional sirens I heard afterwards was due to another fire over in the Bush Extension on Reynolds Avenue. The duplex sounds like a total loss. I had thought it was a Victorian, but the owner claims it was 1930s-vintage.

There's some pretty ferocious discussion in the comments of the duplex story about the regulation of Section 8 housing, with commentary about how many of these units in Bellefonte have burnt due to bad wiring. As for the later comments... I'm sorry, but if you're on public assistance, the way you live your life is everyone's business, and you shouldn't beg with one breath and demand respect for your privacy with the next breath. Speaking of breath, I saw at least one very young firefighter sitting wiped out back on South Ridge by the ambulance, either heatstroked or suffering from smoke inhalation.