BALTIMORE — As flames spread in the first floor of the rowhouse on East Monument Street and smoke filled the second floor, neighbors sounded the alarm.
“A gentleman started hitting all the doors yelling, ‘Fire!’” said Elizabeth Vermillera. “I turned around and started screaming and hollering. About five minutes later, fire trucks were all in the neighborhood.”
Arriving firefighters learned people may be trapped inside and jumped into action saving four children who suffered from smoke inhalation.
“They located and were able to assist four children out of the home who since have been transported to the hospital and are now in stable condition,” said Blair Adams of the Baltimore City Fire Department. “The ages of the children---there was a 12-year-old girl, an 8-year-old girl and two 6-year-old boys.”
From the outside, there’s not much evidence of the fire, but a look inside tells a different story.
A haze of smoke still filled the home with blackened walls leading upstairs, and the primary damage from the fire, itself, appeared to be in the kitchen although its source is still under investigation.
Firefighters also reported that they could find no adults when they arrived on the scene, but in the chaos surrounding the fire, it remains unclear whether the children had been left unsupervised.
“The, I believe, mother was screaming, because she couldn’t locate one of her children, and the child had crawled into one of the cars out here believe it or not,” said Vermillera. “So, it took the fire department to locate the child, but their mother was devastated. She wasn’t concerned about what she was losing. She was definitely concerned about her children.”