NIGHT OF HORRORS: Mom and her 7 children, aged 2 to 14, die as deadly fire sparked by faulty clothes dryer engulfs home
PARIS, FRANCE: Authorities tragically announced how a mother and her seven children died after a fire broke out in their home in the town of Charly-sur-Marne on Monday, February 6, while they were sleeping. The fire, which broke out in the family's home shortly after midnight, was described as the deadliest fire of its kind in the country in a decade.
The mother and her children, aged 2 to 14, succumbed to asphyxiation. According to prosecutor Julien Morino-Ros, the cause of the fire appears to be a defective clothes dryer on the first floor of the house.
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Walked into a death trap
Speaking to AFP, Morino-Ros said neighbors called the fire department shortly before 1.am local time. The woman's husband - a father of three - reportedly suffered severe burns and was taken to a hospital. The man was rescued by a firefighter who lives nearby and took charge of the rescue himself before his colleagues arrived on the scene. The children are reportedly five girls and two boys, four of whom are from a previous relationship with the mother. The father apparently attempted to extinguish the fire while the mother and children sought refuge on the second floor of the house, which proved to be a death trap, according to the prosecutor.
Firefighters struggled to use ladders to reach upper windows as black smoke filled the house, reportedly located on a narrow street in the village of just 2,600 residents. Morino-Ros said the house's electric shutters were blocked due to a power outage, making the rescue operation much more difficult. About 80 firefighters were on the scene, and it took several hours to extinguish the flames. Local authorities pointed out that this was the worst tragedy since 2013, when five children aged two to nine died from asphyxiation in a fire in northern France.
Tragic fire deaths in the past
MEAWW previously reported how a Chicago woman died and eight others were hospitalized as firefighters rushed to defuse the fire in a high-rise apartment building on January 25. Some of the floors at Harper Square Cooperative, located in the 4800 block of South Lake Park, were engulfed in a fire during snowfall. The woman who died lived on the 15th floor where the fire started and was a retired schoolteacher in her 80s, per CBS News sources. Sophia King, the alderman for the area, shared that the deceased was found in the apartment from where the fire could have actually started according to officials. She added that most of the residents were elderly people in the building
MEAWW also reported how a house fire in New York left three girls dead and several others injured just days after the historic 'Bomb Cyclone' rocked the city on December 31. Eight people, including six children, were inside the two-story house at 207 Dartmouth Avenue when the fire broke out just before 7.30 am. Six children in total, ranging in age from 7 months to 10 years, were removed from the house. At the Oishei Children's Hospital, two patients remained in critical condition, while the infant, a girl, was in a stable state. The home belonged to Clarence and Lisa Liggans. According to sources and officials, the children, aged 7, 8, and 10, died after firefighters helped in evacuating them from the 1.5-story, single-family home on Dartmouth Street.