‘Keep these babies in your prayers’: At least 12 dead in Philadelphia fire
PHILADELPHIA — Fire tore through a duplex home here early Wednesday, killing at least 12 people, including eight children, fire officials said. At least two people were sent to hospitals, and officials warned the toll could grow as firefighters searched the row house, where 26 people had been staying.
The four smoke alarms in the building, which was public housing, don’t appear to have been working, fire officials said. The blaze’s cause wasn’t determined, but officials shaken by the death toll — apparently the highest in a single fire in the city in at least a century — vowed to get to the bottom of it.
“I knew some of those kids — I used to see them playing on the corner,” said Dannie McGuire, 34, fighting back tears as she and Martin Burgert, 35, stood in the doorway of a home around the corner.
Officials didn’t release the names or ages of those killed in the blaze, which started before 6:30 a.m. As many as eight residents appear to have been able to escape the fire, which burned in a residential area of the Fairmount neighborhood, northwest of downtown and home to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its famous “Rocky steps.”
Streets around the fire scene remained blocked off in midafternoon as investigators worked. Onlookers and neighbors had largely migrated to a nearby elementary school, where relatives and friends of the home’s residents gathered to wait for news.
A small group of people, some wrapped in Salvation Army blankets, stared down 23rd Street, where the blaze happened, hugging one another and crying. Several friends of the children stopped by the school, hoping for information, after their texts and calls went unanswered.
Rabiya Turner said she rushed to the home this morning to bring clothes to cousins who were able to escape the blaze. People gathered at the school for warmth and someone to talk to, she said.
“It’s just like floating — everybody’s floating,” she said before rushing away.
Officials held a news conference earlier in the day, near the fire scene.
“It was terrible. I’ve been around for 35 years now and this is probably one of the worst fires I have ever been to,” said Craig Murphy, first deputy fire commissioner.
“Losing so many kids is just devastating,” Mayor Jim Kenney said. “Keep these babies in your prayers.”
First lady Jill Biden, who along with President Joe Biden has deep ties to the Philadelphia area, tweeted, “My heart is with the families and loved ones of the victims of the tragic fire in Philadelphia.”