Two small children were the victims of a fatal house fire, Monday afternoon, in Mulvane.
Mulvane Public Information Officer Dave Williams says emergency responders were called to the 400 block of E. Bridge Street shortly after 12:30 p.m., Monday after the report of a home on fire.
When firefighters arrived on scene, the home was fully engulfed in flames, Williams said. Firefighters went through the home on an initial victim search, but found no one.
"We had fire in the ceiling, fire in the floors, fire in the walls, of course the main thing was trying to find victims in the house and we couldn't find any," he said.
After an hour of battling the flames, the first victim was found followed by the second an hour later, Williams said. Both were found in the back bedroom of the home.
"The ceiling had collapsed. There were a lot of debris on top of them and that's why we couldn't see them," said Williams. "They had been there a while and there was no way we could save them,"
The victims are believed to be a pair of sisters, ages 3 and 4 years-old. Another child, age 7, of the home was at school at the time of the blaze, neighbors said.
The parents were believed to be in the front room of the home at the time of the fire, Williams said. The mother smelled smoke while the father went to investigate. He found the mattresses on fire with a lot of smoke.
"He couldn't see anything and the smoke was so bad they had to get out of the house," Williams said.
At around 4 p.m., fire crews were cleaning up the scene, ventilating the home while arson investigators from Wichita were conducting interviews with the parents of the two children at the Mulvane Police Department. The investigation into the deaths will continue into the evening and possibly early morning hours.
"It's just like any other criminal investigation. First of all they are going to talk to everybody in the neighbor, they are going to talk to the parents, which is what they are doing right now and then they will come back and once the scene is secure....they will go back in and they have the expertise to try and determine what caused the fire and that's what they are going to be looking for and that will tell us where we need to go with the investigation," said Williams.
