DETROIT (WXYZ) — Three people are dead, and two people have been transported to the hospital after a fire broke out early Monday morning at a home on Detroit's west side, per a spokesperson with the Detroit Fire Department.
Watch footage from Chopper 7 as crews battle the house
The fire broke out at a home in the 19000 block of Wildemere just after 6 a.m., with firefighters responding to the home five minutes later. As of 7:30 a.m., the house was still smoking from one of the windows.
Officials tell us that two people were trapped inside the home, with firefighters unable to get to them in time to save their lives due to a large number of items in the home. Deputy Chief Lorenzo Robertson said that a line could not be advanced due to the clutter inside the home. Fire officials were unable to determine the age and gender of those victims.
"It becomes challenging and it's something we're trained to do, obstacles are obstacles," Dep. Chief Robertson said. "We can get around them for the most part, sometimes it just slows us down. We got around it, it just slows us down, and as we know, time is critical in this instance."
Hear from fire officials at the scene
Three people were transported to the hospital in this fire: a teenage girl and an elderly woman inside the home at the time of the fire, and an adult male who was outside of the home when the fire broke out. We're told that the teen died on the way to the hospital. According to Detroit Fire, the elderly woman is in critical condition, and the man is expected to make a full recovery.
A neighbor who didn't want to share her name said she talked to the family "once in a blue moon", including on Halloween.
"When I came outside, it was chaos," the neighbor told us. "I thought it was a car accident, but when i came out, it ended up being a fire...(I saw) people running, and bringing people out. So I saw 3 people being pulled out and they came and rushed them off.
The cause of the fire is under investigation at this time.
