Posted on 01/06/2022 4:41:27 PM PST by BenLurkin
A child playing with a cigarette lighter near a Christmas tree may have sparked the deadly Philadelphia fire that killed at least a dozen people — including eight children.
An application for a warrant filed Wednesday cites “information that a child age 5 or under was playing with a lighter and lit the tree on fire,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The Wednesday-morning blaze swept through the Fairmount rowhouses, with the victims believed to include two mothers and their children, the Inquirer said.
Sources told the newspaper that the child who allegedly started the blaze ran outside as flames engulfed the three-story building and told first-responders that the tree was on fire.
The medical examiner’s office has not ruled on the causes of death, while the city Philadelphia Fire Marshal’s Office continues to investigate the blaze.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
From what I heard on the news, that household sounded like it was a boarding house for illegals. I heard there were over 20 people in those 2 apartments.
I think one article listed at least 26. My mother grew up in a row house like that. There are three rooms per level, typically. Front to back, living room, dining room, kitchen on the ground floor. Bedroom, bathroom/storage, another bedroom on an upper floor. There were five residents in my mother’s house (two story with a basement) until her grandmother died. Then there were four.
The Philadelphia Housing Authority owns the house that burned.
PHA owns that building? Damn…
Going to find out how when you are owned by a government agency how many safety and code violations are let slide that no private owner would get away with, I suspect.
No brotherly love when it comes to sprinkler systems apparently.
THIS!
It had smoke alarms, but none of them went off.
We had a big victorian home growing up....my brother was playing with matches and set his bedroom window curtain on fire. Quick action by mother put it out rapidly or our home could have burnt to the ground. He was probably 6 or 7 yrs old.
Yikes! How did someone let a 5 year old get a hold of a lighter?????
No batteries
Paywall, so I don’t know how much you can see. Eight people lived on the first floor. Eighteen people lived on the 2nd and 3rd floors.
“The Philadelphia Housing Authority inspected the building twice last year and all smoke detectors were operational during the inspections, according to a statement from city officials.”
We need to marshal all the furious powers of government to remove lighters from civilian hands to stop the lighter violence plaguing our nation’s youth. We can start with registering all lighters and requiring that everyone who lights a cigarette, a grill or a fireplace be fingerprinted and put on a federal lighter registry. Anyone who engages in these activities must pass a NICS background check every time they buy a lighter. /Please don’t tell me that I need to put a “sarc” tag on my posts.
A smoker left it lying on a low surface.
We will see….
You don’t need a sarcasm tag you just need to go further.
Ban all lighters. Except for government agents of course.
If it saves just one life it’s worth going back to the stone age!
Sounds like what we grew up in; except there were 9 of us and three bedrooms and a bath upstairs.
I’ve been in a lot of Philly row homes — the third floor is usually an unfinished attic with narrow stairs going up, but they could be converted into bedrooms or finished open space, maybe add a bathroom over the 2nd floor one.
Some versions have 3 bedrooms on the second floor (either two smaller, narrow bedrooms side by side in the back, or a middle bedroom that has a tiny bump-out window). Most have only one bathroom at the upstairs landing, or in the center of the hall, a very few had a powder room added downstairs or in the basement if it was finished.
I know there were families who lived in these with 4, 5, even 6 kids in the home (bunk beds!!) .... but 26 people!! No way! Disaster waiting to happen, and I wonder how many other similar houses there are in Philly.
*Note* - on reading some local articles, it was a duplex and had an “odd configuration”. That probably means added kitchens & bathrooms, carved out areas for bedrooms & main family rooms.
But possibly only 2 exits for the entire duplex? Maybe 4 total, 2 in each unit?
Supposedly there were 13 smoke and 6 carbon monoxide detectors in the building - checked and found operational at an annual inspection, but NONE of them worked at the time of the fire??
We had 11 people in our 4-bedroom house for a while. I understand about adding beds.
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