Coroner names man who died in Greensburg apartment building fire

Authorities have identified a man who died in a Greensburg apartment building fire Monday night.

The Westmoreland County coroner’s office listed the victim as David M. Bramini, 40. A ruling on the cause and manner of death is pending results from an autopsy and from toxicology testing.

Greensburg Fire Chief Tom Bell said a preliminary investigation indicates the fire at the Autumn Brook Apartments, off Luzerne Street, likely started with cooking on a stove.

He said no one else was injured in the fire, with damage contained inside an apartment on the second floor of the three-story building.

When firefighters entered the unlocked apartment door, they found the victim about 10 feet inside, lying on the floor next to a couch, Bell said. Efforts to revive the man were unsuccessful, he said.

Firefighters found some hot spots in the kitchen, but there were no visible flames, according to Bell. “The fire had used up all the oxygen,” he said.

There was extensive damage in the kitchen, with some heat and smoke damage in other areas of the apartment, Bell said.

Firefighters couldn’t be sure if a smoke alarm in the apartment had functioned properly. “It was pretty melted away,” Bell said.

If the smoke had escaped into an adjacent hallway, he said, it should have set off a building alarm that would have alerted a monitoring company to call 911.

Instead, he said, the call to 911 came at about 11:30 p.m. from a woman living in a second-floor apartment three doors down from the Bramini residence.

“She was complaining that she heard an alarm going off for about three hours,” Bell said. Firefighters determined she‘d heard a carbon monoxide alarm that was triggered in a hallway about 25 feet from the Bramini apartment.

Bell said firefighters were able to determine the location of the fire when they spotted melted blinds in the closed window of the apartment and detected a high temperature reading at the window.