Pennsylvania house fire kills six, including three children

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Six people, including three young children, died after a lethal Independence Day fire erupted at a Pennsylvania home, officials said Friday.

Authorities responding to the blaze at a Lancaster, Pa., row house Thursday found the bodies of four people -- Jimmie Moore, 64; David Kuhns, 50; and Kuhns' sons, Skyler, 8, and Shawn, 6 -- who died in the fire, Lt. Thomas Paul of the Lancaster City Bureau of Fire told Reuters.

Two people injured in the blaze -- Crystal Kuhns, 41, and her daughter Mickey, 4 -- were transported to a medical center in Upland, Pa., where they died Thursday evening, Lt. Ken Wright of the Lancaster firefighting force told Reuters.

Kuhns' son, Cordell, 2, was in critical condition at the same medical center Friday, according to Reuters.

The deadly inferno was sparked just before 3 a.m. Thursday after potatoes cooking in an oven in the first-floor kitchen were left unattended, according to NBC Philadelphia.

The residence, home to 14 people, was apparently not equipped with smoke detectors, Paul told Reuters.

Moore reportedly owned the residence and had allowed another family to live there after they lost their home, according to The Associated Press.

Moore's 28-year-old pregnant daughter, Martha, escaped the burning building through a second-floor window and fled to a neighbor's home, according to the Intelligencer Journal, a newspaper in Lancaster.

She received an emergency Caesarean section at Lancaster General Hospital and the baby was born at 11 a.m. Thursday, weighing 4 pounds and 5 ounces, the newspaper reported.

Martha's brother, Jimmie Brock, told the newspaper that Martha learned her father, a Vietnam War veteran, had died shortly after she gave birth.

Her response, according to Brock: "How do I celebrate my baby with my dad dying?"

"He died on a day that he was recognized as a hero of our country," Brock told the newspaper.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663306/s/2e45ae07/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A70C0A50C1930A77780Epennsylvania0Ehouse0Efire0Ekills0Esix0Eincluding0Ethree0Echildren0Dlite/story01.htm

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