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Trapped girls die in
house fire
September 9, 2007 - 3:35PM
Fire investigators say
two girls who died in a house fire in Brisbane's west had been
trapped inside by the smoke and flames, unable to find their way
out.
The blaze broke out in
the laundry of the two-storey brick house in Pinkwood Street,
Bellbowrie, shortly after midnight and was well alight by the time
firefighters arrived at 12.40am (AEST) today.
Two 15-year-old boys, an
eight-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl escaped unhurt from the
upper storey of the house.
But two more girls,
believed to be step-sisters aged four and nine, were trapped in the
downstairs rumpus room, their two exits via the back door and the
stairwell blocked by the fire, fire investigator Danny Carson said.
"Unfortunately, the two
little girls were in an area where they may have been trapped by the
fire," he told reporters today.
"The only other escape
routes they had were the windows at the front of the house and with
little four-year-olds and ten- (sic) year-olds and that sort of
situation, they are not thinking of that.
"They are looking for mum
and dad, I'm afraid.
"The only thing we can
really say - and we harp on it all the time - is that smoke alarms
are the big issue. We need early warnings.
"And we need to teach
kids other ways out of the house, rather than just one doorway."
Firefighters said there
were no smoke alarms fitted in the lower storey of the house and
they had been unable to determine yet if there were smoke alarms on
the upper storey.
Mr. Carson believed the
girls would have been overcome by smoke before the flames actually
reached them.
"It's all surmising, but
let's hope they didn't suffer - and I don't think they did."
The next-door neighbour
tried to enter the house but was beaten back by the intense heat and
smoke.
"There was no chance
anyone was going in there to get them out," Mr. Carson said.
The cause of the fire was
still under investigation and the names of the dead girls have not
yet been released.
They will be formally
identified using DNA and dental records, police said.
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