A woman and her young children are in critical condition at a hospital after Baltimore firefighters rescued them from a house fire Saturday morning in Northwest Baltimore.
Firefighters arrived around 7:55 a.m. to heavy flames showing from the top floor of a three-story occupied house in the 4800 block of Beaufort Ave. Firefighters rescued a 27-year-old woman and her 8-year-old and 3-year-old daughters from the Central Park Heights home and transported them to a hospital. The fire was extinguished shortly before 8:30 a.m.
Neighbors described seeing the woman on top of an awning above the front door after she escaped from the burning building. Firefighters used a ladder to rescue her from the porch roof. One neighbor heard her call for her children, whom firefighters found inside the house. Fire personnel ran the girls, who appeared to be unconscious, to an ambulance, the neighbor said.
Mayor Brandon Scott, Fire Chief Niles Ford and Councilwoman Sharon Green Middleton gathered in front of the charred house hours after the fire and urged residents to check their smoke detectors. The smoke detector at the home did not appear to be working Saturday morning, Ford said, but said the investigation into the cause of the fire and the functionality of the house’s fire alarms is in early stages.
“I want to take time to use this as a solemn reminder for all of us, as we are in winter, of the importance of having a fire safety plan in your home. The importance of having a smoke detector, which the fire department will install for free by simply just having you call 311,” Scott said. “We want to make sure we’re seeing less and less of these incidents and less and less of people being injured in these incidents.”
A strong smell of smoke wafted from the rowhome’s broken windows Saturday afternoon. A misplaced book lay open atop the awning. A crumbled kiddie pool and child’s seesaw rested in the yard in front of the husk of a blackened couch thrown to the outdoor patio.
Middleton, who represents the residential Central Park Heights community she described as a close-knit neighborhood, promoted the fire department’s smoke detector program as an easy safety precaution that can save lives. City residents can call 311 to have fire personnel come to their residence and install a smoke alarm for free. The fire department advises residents to check their smoke detector monthly and replace its battery routinely, such as changing clocks for daylight savings time.
Fire alerts can also give residents time to escape a burning building before firefighters arrive at the scene. Firefighters will attack a fire differently if people are trapped inside and need to be rescued, Ford said. Three Baltimore firefighters died Jan. 24 when they entered a vacant rowhome to extinguish the fire from inside the building. Lt. Kelsey Sadler, Lt. Paul Butrim, and firefighter/paramedic Kenny Lacayo were told people could be trapped inside the house, which collapsed minutes after they went inside.
Scott praised Baltimore’s firefighters during the media conference Saturday as the sound of fire engines responding to another call in the nearby area blared above his voice.
“As a city let’s wrap our arms around this family through deep prayer. But also, again, support the women and men in the fire department who do this heroic job each and every,” he said.
