A St. Paul woman died in a fire early Sunday, the victim of a fierce blaze that was made more dangerous by personal belongings stacked and packed inside her modest house on Rose Avenue.
Renee B. Tollas, 63, was the owner of the house on the 70 block of Rose Avenue E., north of the State Capitol, said St. Paul Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard.
The house was "really a blaze," Zaccard said, and it was full of personal items that made searching for Tollas and extinguishing the fire difficult.
Firefighters discovered personal items packed to a height of about 4 feet in the house, he said.
"She had a lot of personal property — some would call that hoarding — which made it more likely to have a fire because of all the combustible materials," Zaccard said. "And it makes it more difficult to escape the fire, which may have been the case here."
After firefighters arrived on the scene early Sunday morning, they located Tollas, who lived alone, inside a bathtub toward the back of the single-story house.
"They had to extricate her through the bathroom window," Zaccard said.
Tollas was treated at the scene and transferred to the hospital, where she died, he said.