PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia fire investigators believe that last week’s fatal rowhouse blaze in the Fairmount neighborhood, which killed 12 people, began when a 5-year-old boy set a Christmas tree on fire with a lighter, Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said Tuesday.
Speaking at a news conference alongside Mayor Jim Kenney and other city and federal officials, Thiel said investigators were able to conclude with “99% to 100% confidence” that the Christmas tree was the first item in the house to burn before flames spread to the rest of the rowhouse. That determination was based on what Thiel called an “exhaustive” examination of nearby electrical outlets, debris left behind and other evidence from the scene.
Investigators also found a lighter near the tree afterward, Thiel said. And they determined through interviews that the boy was the only person on the same floor as the tree when the fire began.
The findings essentially confirmed what the boy — who was able to flee and survived —told first responders in the immediate aftermath, according to police records obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer: That he accidentally lit a Christmas tree aflame while playing with a lighter.
Thiel said investigators “could not find anything to disprove that hypothesis.” Both he and Kenney called the situation a tragedy. And Thiel said the fire likely became “untenable and deadly” in under three minutes, with temperatures inside the three-story building reaching around 900 or 1,000 degrees.
Key questions remain, including why some of the smoke detectors in the apartment didn’t sound, and whether the family had adequate means to escape. Local and federal investigators have spent six days poring over physical evidence and interviewing surviving witnesses.
The child was one of two people from his family who were in the top unit of the duplex and survived — a man on the third floor escaped out a window and was hospitalized with serious injuries. The medical examiner’s office has yet to rule on the causes of death for the 12 people who died, and authorities have not named them. But relatives and friends identified the victims as sisters Rosalee McDonald, 33, Virginia Thomas, 30, and Quinsha White, 18, as well as nine of their children, ages 2 to 16.
The fire broke out in the Fairmount rowhouse on the 800 block of North 23rd Street just after 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 5, and was the deadliest conflagration in Philadelphia in a generation. Five people, including three children, who lived in an apartment on the first floor escaped with minor injuries.
The family in the upper unit had lived in the four-bedroom apartment for about a decade, and 14 people were listed on the lease, according to records kept by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, which owns and operates the building. Fire Department leadership had initially said 18 people were in the upper unit at the time of the fire. On Tuesday, they revised that and said 14 people were in the upper unit, while eight were in the unit occupying the first floor.
There were six working smoke detectors in the unit as of an inspection last spring, the agency said, but fire officials said at least four didn’t sound. The apartment was not equipped with a fire extinguisher or a fire escape, neither of which is required under Philadelphia building codes or PHA policy for structures of that size.
About 75 first responders battled the fire, the first arriving on scene within five minutes of the initial 911 calls. When firefighters arrived, they found the second floor filled with thick smoke and heavy flames were pouring out the windows. Fire officials said flames quickly shot up an open stairwell and into the third floor.
Funeral services for those who died have not yet been planned.
