The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper assures that the building belongs to the city’s housing service.
Thirteen people, seven of them minors, died this Wednesday in a fire in a three story building in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, firefighters reported.
The assistant commissioner of the Philadelphia Fire Department, Craig Murphy, explained in a press conference that the emergency services received the alert at 06:38 local time (11:38 GMT time) and when they arrived at the scene they found an “intense fire” which took an hour to control.
“It is a very, very sad day. I have been in the body for 35 years and this is probably one of the worst fires I have ever encountered ”, Murphy said, visibly excited.
The fire broke out for reasons that are still being investigated in a semi-detached residential building owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, responsible for providing homes to people with few economic resources or in vulnerable situations.
The building had six smoke detectors, but none of them were working properly, fire officials said.
Despite having been a single-family house in its origins, in the 1950s the three-story building was renovated into two different apartments.
Apart from the 13 who died, another 10 people managed to evacuate the building alive. (I)
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