WILMINGTON, Del. — A firefighter was forced to bail out during a fatal house fire Tuesday afternoon.
6ABC.com reported that two children, a 3-month-old girl and 3-year-old girl, were killed and their mother and was critically injured when flames tore through their home. A 2-year-old sibling was also hurt in the fire.
Witnesses said out of nowhere the home just exploded.
“I tried to get in there and all I kept thinking about was the kids,” neighbor Aaron McManus said. “I ran around the back and opened the door, and crawled in there and screamed ‘anybody in here,’ but it was so much smoke coming.”
During the fire, the flames were so intense that a firefighter went headfirst out of a second-story window. He wasn’t injured and continued battling the fire, according to the report.
The mother is in critical but stable condition at a hospital. The 2-year-old was taken to a hospital to be checked out, but has since been released.
“I feel helpless because I couldn’t do anything, and I’m mad, I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight, because it feels like I let those kids down. But I didn’t, but I did because I couldn’t get to the kids,” McManus said.
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
#BREAKING - Fire burning on 500 block of Monroe Street in Wilmington. Details on Action News on 6abc. pic.twitter.com/ove2OUO307
— Action News on 6abc (@6abc) January 12, 2016