Two children who had just moved into a Southeast Baltimore neighborhood were killed yesterday afternoon when fire engulfed their Fleet Street rowhouse, trapping the youngsters in a second-floor room.
Several neighbors and patrons of a restaurant across the street broke down the front door in a failed attempt to get past the smoke and flames to save the children.
"It was unbelievable," said Rick Smith, a chef at Fins restaurant, who watched the rescue attempt. "It was thick columns of black smoke. It's a horrible tragedy."
Fire officials identified the victims as Christina Aulton, 4, and her sister, Natalie Lambert, 2. They were pronounced dead at the scene. Their deaths bring the number of fire fatalities in the city this year to 40, six more than for all of 1993.
Their mother, Renee Aulton, 26, was taken by ambulance to Church Hospital, where she was being evaluated. Fire officials said she suffered no apparent injuries, and she was being questioned by fire investigators yesterday evening.
Battalion Chief Hector L. Torres, a Fire Department spokesman, said investigators are not sure whether Ms. Aulton was home when the fire broke out, as she has claimed.
"They are looking into all kinds of conflicting reports," Chief Torres said. "They are trying to piece it together right now. The fire is not considered suspicious. We just have to make sure we know what the story is."
Chief Torres said the cause of the fire, which caused $55,000 in damage to the two-story Formstone rowhouse in the 2300 block of Fleet St. in Canton, has not been determined.
Lt. Thurman Pugh said more than a dozen fire engines with 40 firefighters responded to the one-alarm blaze. Firefighters reported that when they pulled up to the house, flames were shooting out of two upstairs windows.
Chief Torres would not say what room the children were in when the fire broke out, but he said the fire originated in a second-floor rear room. The children also were upstairs, he said. The house had one working smoke detector, but Chief Torres said it was "not very well placed," in that it was on a wall of the first-floor dining room. "Our emphasis is that you have one on every level of the home," he said. "Probably the most important place is outside the bedrooms."
He said the mother told investigators that she was downstairs when the fire broke out and that she tried to get to her children, but couldn't fight past the smoke and flames.
She told them her boyfriend knocked on the front door moments after she discovered the fire, an account that investigators confirmed by interviewing him.
But several neighbors, including Mr. Smith, the chef, said they saw the mother coming around a corner across the street from her house after they noticed the fire. The report is being checked out by fire investigators, Chief Torres said.
Mr. Smith said several patrons ran out of the restaurant and tried to get inside the house, and one man even pulled the fire extinguisher off a wall and used it to try and douse the flames.
Eleanor Bennett, 71, who lives a block from Ms. Aulton's house, said a neighbor who doesn't have a telephone rushed over and yelled for her to call the Fire Department. Just then, she heard fire engines roaring up the street.
She didn't know the family well because they just moved in two weeks ago, Ms. Bennett said, but she remembers the children from her daily walks.
"I just passed them by on Saturday," she said. "The oldest one waved at me and smiled at me. Two little children. It's so sad, I can't believe it. Several men ran over and kicked the door open, but the smoke just pushed them back. It makes my heart sick."