Firefighters who were tackling a one-alarm house fire in Woodlawn shortly after noon Thursday found a woman dead just inside the front door of the single-family dwelling.

Elise Armacost, a spokeswoman for the county fire department, said fire crews who were summoned to the blaze in the 3100 block of Gartside Drive in northwestern Baltimore County came across the woman, who was "deceased from her injuries."

The victim's identity was not immediately released. Fire investigators remained at the scene in early afternoon and had not determined a cause of the fire.

The woman was the third person from the greater Baltimore area to die in a fire in the space of five days. A 3-year-old boy died Sunday after being overcome by smoke when a two-story row house erupted in flames on the 2500 block of West Lanvale Street in West Baltimore. The following day, an 82-year-old woman, Betty Lou Shipe, was rescued from a burning row house in Hampden. She died on Tuesday morning.

nick.madigan@baltsun.com