Fireworks destroy Pennsylvania home, displacing family of 8

A family of eight has been displaced after a firework set off nearby destroyed their home in Wilkes-Barre.

Four children and four adults, who were just getting ready for bed, rushed out of the burning house around 12:30 a.m. Monday after an aerial firework landed on their back porch, WNEP is reporting.

Families on either side of the building on the 100 block of Westminster Street were forced to evacuate as well, WBRE/WYOU is reporting.

Fireworks set off by someone else nearby are to blame, reports indicate.

“An aerial firework, the substance in it will melt glass,” Wilkes-Barre fire Chief Jay Delaney told WBRE/WYOU. “When you light that on the ground, you have no idea where that’s going to go to. In this instance, it hit a house last night and it caught the house on fire.”

The state bars people from setting off fireworks within 150 feet of a building, but “There’s nowhere in Wilkes-Barre, never mind most places in the Wyoming Valley, that you can do that, yet you see it done on a regular basis,” Delaney told WNEP.

Fire crews there were called to three fires in the Wilkes-Barre area Sunday night and into Monday, and two of those fires were fireworks related, reports indicate.

In West York, one child died and another was injured in a fire officials say was caused by the improper disposal of spent fireworks.

Police in Ephrata say carelessly discarded fireworks may be to blame for a fire at a municipal facility Sunday night.

And a volunteer firefighter in Montgomery County died Sunday during a house fire that may have started on the roof as a result of fireworks.