Three people were killed in house fires in Ardmore and West Philadelphia

Three people are dead after two unrelated blazes claimed homes in West Philadelphia and Ardmore, adding to a spate of deadly fires across the region.

Crews from the Philadelphia Fire Department responded to a house fire on the 5700 block of Harmer Street in West Philadelphia just before 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Philadelphia police said.

It took more than 60 Philadelphia firefighters to bring the blaze under control by 8 p.m., officials said. A 37-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene, police said, while a 48-year-old man suffered injuries but was in stable condition at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

The identity of the deceased man has yet to be released. Police said the fire was ruled to be an arson. An investigation is ongoing.

» READ MORE: Deadly fires kill 3 people, including an 8-year-old girl, in 2 days in Philly

In Ardmore, two people died in a house fire on the 200 block of Greenfield Avenue. Crews from the Lower Merion Fire Department arrived on the scene at 9 p.m. after having received reports of people trapped, according to a Facebook post from the department’s Ardmore station. Flames and heavy smoke poured from the home’s second story, which had “zero viability,” officials said in the Facebook post.

Firefighters found an adult man in a bedroom doorway on the second floor. He was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, officials told NBC10. A woman was found in that same bedroom after the fire was extinguished about an hour later. She also died, said officials. Their identities have not been released.

The Ardmore home’s smoke detectors were not working. The cause of this blaze is under investigation.

“Our prayers and thoughts are with the family and the entire neighborhood,” wrote the fire department.

Thursday evening’s fires are the third and fourth fatal blazes to occur in the Philadelphia area over the past week. An 8-year-old girl and 31-year-old woman died last Saturday morning as flames engulfed a home on the 900 block of Granite Street in the Crescentville section of North Philadelphia.

And Shadeek McDowell, 38, was charged with murder and arson last week in connection with a fire that killed Evelyn Payne, 66. Payne was found dead in a bedroom of a home on the 1800 block of East Russell Street in Harrowgate on Aug. 23. Eight families were displaced between those two fires, the Red Cross told The Inquirer.