‘Very, very difficult morning’: Three dead, including two kids, in North Philly house fire
The three victims — a 5-year-old boy, a 6-year-old girl, and a 45-year-old woman — have not yet been identified.
Three people, including two young children, are dead after an early-morning fire ripped through a North Philadelphia rowhouse Tuesday morning.
“Very, very difficult morning,” said Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson said during a news conference.
Firefighters responded to reports of a fire in the 3400 block of Hope Street around 1 a.m. Deputy Chief Frank Hannan said the fire was in the back of the first floor of the home, which did not have working smoke alarms.
Firefighters pulled three people out of the building, Hannan said — a 5-year-old boy, a 6-year-old girl, and a 45-year-old woman.
“The two children were transferred to St. Christopher’s Hospital, one adult was transported to Temple Hospital,” Hannon said. “All three occupants have been declared deceased by the hospital.”
The police department identified the victims as Nidre Annette Ayala, 45; Kataleya Garcia, 6; and Sebastian Rodriguez-DeJesus, 5. The children were siblings.
Thompson said that the woman killed was not the mother of the two children.
“From what I understand, the mother of the children is at the hospital,” Thompson said.
Neighbors on Hope Street remember the two children playing in the neighborhood, laughing and enjoying games in front of their home. One neighbor said that as the children often played, a man would regularly work on his car beside them.
Queani Crespo, 22, saw the flames from her home next door, which was still enveloped in the smell of ash and smoke from hours earlier.
“This fire has been crazy. It’s just been too much,” Crespo said. “From seeing those kids running around, playing on this block, and just being happy, to seeing what happened to them. It is the worst feeling.”
In front of the home sat two large decorated pumpkins from the Halloween season, adorned with children’s drawings, smiley faces, and polka dots.
The home itself looked hollowed-out, with every glass window in the front shattered; burn marks were left like shadows on the corners of the frames. Out front, a three-foot-tall pile of blackened debris sat as the smell of smoke stained the Tuesday afternoon air.
Crespo and other neighbors said there were no loud explosions that precipitated the fire. They said the smoke billowing from the two-story home was nauseating.
“I couldn’t feel the heat, but the smoke was crazy,” Crespo said Tuesday afternoon. “The little house right next door to the fire is mine. It still smells like fire and smoke. It’s really bad.”
The cause of the fire remained under investigation. There was no initial indication of arson, police said. Thompson urged anyone without working smoke alarms to contact the city, which provides them free of charge.
“If you do not have smoke alarms, please call 311, and we will come out and install them for you,” Thompson said.