A house fire in Southwest Philadelphia kills a 12-year old boy and sends his twin brother to the hospital.
The brother was able to wake up the his parents and older sister so they could get out of the rowhome on Dickens Street.
Neighbors called 911 a little after 3 a.m. when they saw flames shooting out of the second floor. One of the neighbors, a fire department medic, said he woke up when the sister and surviving twin banged on his front door, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"My house, my house," the girl told the medic, Lamont Washington. Washington and another neighbor rushed over to the home but the flames were too intense for anyone to get up to the second floor.
The brother who did not survive was found in a bedroom on the second floor. The other had burns on his face and was taken over to CHOP. "They're good kids, real good kids," Washington said of the twins.
It was a fast-moving fire and no one heard any smoke alarms go off, according to Deputy Fire Commissioner John Devlin. There was a smoke alarm on the second floor, but no one heard it, so officials think it wasn't working. Another smoke detector in the basemet did go off but the battery was low so it wasn't very loud, according to the Inky report.
"The lesson here is that no one heard a smoke alarm going off, and what we want to tell people is that if you have working smoke alarms on every floor, you should be able to walk out the front door if a fire should occur," Devlin said.
