A man and a teenage girl have both tragically died following a house fire in Cumbria. The blaze broke out in the Distington property just before 5am earlier this morning (May 22).
Mirror Online reports that neighbours were evacuated from nearby properties as firefighters tackled the blaze. Cumbria Police later confirmed that a 58-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl sadly died from their injuries.
In a statement, the force said: "Police were called at 4.47am today (22 May) with a report of a house fire at Toll Bar Houses. A 58-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl, both from Distington, died at the scene of the fire.
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"Police and Cumbria Fire & Rescue Service are working together to investigate the potential cause of the fire. Neighbouring properties were evacuated and there are no further reported injuries at this time.
"A number of roads remain closed as emergency services continue to deal with this incident."
John Beard, chief fire officer of Cumbria fire and rescue, visited the scene and spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria about the blaze earlier this morning. He said: “We’ve still got crews on scene at the moment and we were faced with a really serious fully developed fire on arrival so the crews had a really challenging incident to deal with.
“It is under control now so the crews are just damping down the hotspots but I expect our crews to be on scene for most of the morning if not into the afternoon. The fire had spread to the next door property as well but the crews did a really good job to stop it spreading from the roof of the neighbouring property.”
He added that it was still far too early to know what had caused the fire and that fires of this "severity" were rare.
