Two children were killed in a two-alarm fire in Dorchester early this morning that firefighters believe may have been caused by a space heater used to warm a bedroom.
The fire broke out shortly after midnight in the three-decker on Bellevue Street, said Boston Fire Chief Kevin MacCurtain last night.
MacCurtain said 14 people lived in the building. One boy and one girl died in the blaze.
This morning at the site, Stephen MacDonald said a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy had died in the blaze.Six adults and six children escaped the fire.
The investigation of the blaze is continuing, he said. But there was a space heater in the room where the fire started leading investigators tolook at it for a potential cause.
"You wonder why people didn't get out, but they're children and the fire, it was intense," said MacDonald.
Damage was estimated at $300,000, he said.
Firefighters recovered a photo from the apartment where the fire began showing the family dressed up and smiling.
Fire officials said a couple with five children lived on the first floor. Four of them, including the two who died, were sleeping in the room where the fire broke out.
"The message we want to get out is that space heaters in bedrooms are very dangerous. We see this way too often," MacCurtain said last night.
MacDonald said about 60 firefighters responded to the fire, with 10 to 15 engines.
Fire officials didn't immediately identify the victims. MacDonald said the remaining family members and the people who lived on the building's second and third floors would be offered shelter by the American Red Cross.
A half hour after the fire began, the flames had been extinguished but the fire was still billowing smoke as firefighters worked inside the building.
The narrow, hilly street was crowded with fire engines. Neighbors stood on their porches and in the streets to watch.
After another hour, the smoke had stopped. The left rear corner of the building could be seen, burnt down to the frame on the first and second floors.
The distraught parents of the children who died yelled and screamed on the porch of a building across the street as they were restrained by EMTs.
They were taken away on stretchers with a third woman, identified by officials as the children's grandmother.
Matt Canton, 21, who lived on the third floor of the burned building, said last night he was relieved to have escaped.
He said he was acquainted with the family that had suffered the loss, but didn't know them well. "They smiled and said hello," he said. "They had beautiful kids."
An elderly woman who lived across the street said she knew the family as "friendly, churchgoing people."
"That's the one thing that I really liked about them. They took their kids to church every Sunday," she said.
This morning a next-door neighbor dressed in a bathrobe watched firefighters working on the site. "It just seems hard to believe and questionable about how something like that could happen," said John Odams.
