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Northeast Philadelphia house fire spreads across 3 homes, injuring 5 people

Twelve people were displaced in the multi-home blaze, and it isn't known if smoke detectors were operational.

Philadelphia fire department at scene of row house fire that started on the 3300 block of Kayford Circle in Morrell Park on Tuesday morning. The fire destroyed three rowhouses and sent five people to hospital.
Philadelphia fire department at scene of row house fire that started on the 3300 block of Kayford Circle in Morrell Park on Tuesday morning. The fire destroyed three rowhouses and sent five people to hospital.Read moreAlejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer

Twelve people were displaced and five were hospitalized after a fire spread across three homes in the Morrell Park section of Northeast Philadelphia.

Firefighters responded to a house fire on the 3300 block of Kayford Circle around 3:15 a.m. Tuesday, when crews saw heavy fire consume the first and second floors of a three-story rowhouse. Flames then consumed two neighboring homes as firefighters worked to tame the blaze.

“The fire was out of control for approximately an hour and 17 minutes,” Philadelphia Fire Deputy Chief Vincent Mulray told reporters on the scene.

Officials said three people from the home where the fire originated were injured, as were two more from a neighboring residence. All were in stable condition at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital, where they were being treated for smoke inhalation and burns, per Mulray.

Mulray said there was an explosion when firefighters arrived on the scene.

The fire marshal has determined that the fire was an accident caused by smoking, according to Fire Department spokesperson Kathy Matheson. There was no word whether smoke detectors across any of the homes were working.

“The whole deck was up [in flames]. We tried to call 911 and the firemen showed up literally within seconds they were here,” a neighbor told CBS Philadelphia. “It spread really fast.”

Officials said the fire has displaced eight adults and four children across the three homes. The Red Cross is assisting them.

Forty-one people died and 200 were injured in fires in Philadelphia last year, while thousands were displaced. Federal fire official Lori Moore-Merrell came to Philadelphia earlier this month to unveil a plan that would give U.S. Fire Administration the ability to investigative deadly local fires and identify at-risk buildings.

The policy was partially sparked by a deadly fire in a Philadelphia Housing Authority duplex in Fairmount. Twelve people died in the blaze last year, which occurred in a public housing unit that sat for more than a decade without repairs that could have made the unit safer. That rowhouse didn’t have operational smoke detectors, prompting a separate federal mandate for hardwired smoke alarms in any new housing built with funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.