PHILLY FIRE STARTED WHEN TREE WAS IGNITED

The fire that broke out in a Philadelphia row house last week, leaving 12 dead including nine children, was most likely caused when a 5-yearold boy ignited a Christmas tree with a lighter, city officials said Tuesday.

The fire erupted before dawn Jan. 5, quickly engulfing the second story of a brick row house in the city’s Fairmount neighborhood. The 5-year-old, one of only two people in the apartment who survived, told the police last week that he had been playing with the lighter, forming the earliest theory about the fire’s cause.

Investigators looked for other possible sources of the fire but found nothing that disproved the account given by the child, who was the only person in the part of the apartment where the blaze began, Adam Thiel, the Philadelphia fire commissioner, said in a news conference.

“We are left with the words of that 5-year-old child, that traumatized 5year-old child, to help us understand how the lighter and the tree came together with tragic consequences,” Thiel said. “We have disproved any other theories.”

There were 14 people in the apartment at the time — not 18, as officials had originally said — and all but the 5year-old were in the bedrooms on the third floor. Twelve of them died: three sisters and nine of their sons and daughters. Two people, including the 5-year-old and a man who climbed out of a third-story window, were hospitalized with injuries.

The findings announced on Tuesday were the result of a preliminary investigation by the Fire Marshal’s Office as well as other city and federal agencies, officials said.