A 2-year-old boy was killed in a one-alarm fire in Reservoir Hill Tuesday as workers from a nearby construction site rushed into the burning rowhouse and saved two of his siblings, fire officials said.
The father of the children was at home and injured in the blaze. He was in serious condition at a city hospital, Fire Department spokesman Capt. Roman Clark said. The names of the victims and the severity of the children's injuries weren't released.
The boy's death marked the city's first fire death of the year.
Neighbors described a harrowing and hectic scene in which the father emerged badly burned, prompting a nearby resident to run into the building to save the children, quickly followed by the workers who had been repairing the street a block away.
"I kept on saying, 'Where are the children?'" said neighbor Mada Dean, 56. "When they brought out two of them, I said, 'Where is the baby?'"
Dean said she took out her trash on the back porch of her Callow Avenue home and saw the flames raging in the windows of the rowhouse in the 800 block of Whitelock St.
"All you see was fire. It looked like part of the house," she said. "It was on the windows like a curtain."
A man identified by a spectator as the one who ran into the burning building said fire and debris blocked his way up the interior stairs at the front of the home. He said he hurried through the kitchen in the back and up a second flight of stairs, where he saw two children crying in the middle of a room.
He turned around to find what he thought were firefighters in the smoky room, and moved out of the way to let them rescue the children, he said. Fire Department spokesman Capt. Roman Clark said the rescuers were, in fact, construction workers.
The man declined to give his name, saying he wasn't the one who saved them.
A group of about half a dozen family members, visibly shaken, comforted one another near an ambulance around the corner from the house as firefighters put out the last of the flames. They declined to comment.
Next-door neighbor Jay Watkins said he was home when the fire broke out. Smelling smoke, he walked out to his front porch and looked around to find the source. Then he realized the home, which shares walls with his, was ablaze.
Watkins said he saw the father, who was badly burned on his face and torso, run out of the home wearing only boxer shorts.
"I heard him say, 'My kids are still in there,'" Watkins said.
Volunteers from the American Red Cross of the Greater Chesapeake Region met with families affected by the fire Tuesday, and will provide food, clothing, shoes, winter coats, lodging and counseling as needed, the organization said.
Bola Banjo, who lives next door to the burned rowhouse on the other side, said her unit had been damaged and that she was being assisted by the Red Cross.
The owners of the burned rowhouse, as listed in state property records, could not be reached for comment.
Firefighters were called to the Reservoir Hill blaze at 2:12 p.m., and brought the fire under control at 2:58 p.m., according to Clark.
The cause is under investigation.
After three years of declines brought the number of fire deaths in Baltimore to a low of 12 in 2012, the city logged 21 fire deaths in 2013 and 17 last year.
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