Four people, including two children, were killed and three others were critically injured when an unattended holiday cooking fire swept through a home without smoke detectors in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a fire official said on Thursday.
The blaze started at 3 a.m. on Independence Day in the first-floor kitchen of the row house where 14 people lived and which was not equipped with smoke detectors, said Lieutenant Thomas Paul, an assistant fire marshal of the Lancaster City Bureau of Fire.
Alerted by a neighbor who saw smoke coming from the building, firefighters rushed to the scene at 115 East Clay Street, where unattended cooking sparked the blaze, Paul said.
One of the residents, Martha Moore, the pregnant daughter of the homeowner, was taken to the hospital and doctors performed an emergency cesarean section to deliver her child. Both mother and child are well, Paul said.
Killed in the fire was Moore's father, Jimmie Moore, 65, who owned the home; David Kuhns, an adult whose age was not immediately available; and Kuhns' sons, Skyler, 8, and Shawn, 6, Paul said.
Kuhns' wife, Crystal, and two of her children, aged 2 and 4, were transported to the Crozer Chester Medical Center in Upland, Pennsylvania, and were listed in critical condition, said hospital spokesman Grant Gegwich.
Ten people were hospitalized as a result of the fire, but no other names or the nature of their injuries were immediately available, Paul said.
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