https://ift.tt/2gbNs6N least 13 people, including seven children, were killed in one of the worst fires seen in Philadelphia in years after smoke detectors failed to go off in a public-housing apartment building, the Philadelphia Fire Department said.
Firefighters arrived around 6:40 a.m. (1140 GMT) and fought for about 50 minutes to control the blaze on the second floor of the three-story row house in the city’s Fairmount neighborhood.
The building is owned by the federally funded Philadelphia Housing Authority. Eight people managed to escape the building through one of the two exits, and seven children were among those killed, First Deputy Fire Commissioner Craig Murphy told reporters at a nearby news conference. Officials did not give the children’s ages.
“Keep those babies in your prayers,” Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters.
Fire officials said the death count could change and the cause of the fire was still being investigated.
Nearby, fire trucks were still parked outside the red-brick building, its facade blackened, its windows smashed out and dark.
“It was terrible,” Murphy told reporters. “I’ve been around for 35 years now, and this is probably one of the worst fires I’ve ever been to.”
A child and an adult were taken by paramedics to nearby hospitals. There were four smoke detectors in the building but they failed to activate, fire officials said.