DETROIT, March 3 (UPI) -- Investigators said they were trying to determine what caused a Detroit house fire that killed three children whose mother had left them alone to go to a store.
The children -- ages 3, 4 and 5 -- were pronounced dead at Children's Hospital of Michigan after the Tuesday evening blaze, fire officials told the Detroit Free Press.
When firefighters arrived at the two-story, single-family home about 6:45 p.m., Fifth Battalion Fire Chief Gary Lauer said: "There was nobody on the scene telling us there was anyone inside. The way it was burning was like it's a vacant house. But somebody finally said, 'There's three girls upstairs.'
"(Firefighters) found the girls pretty quickly. But the smoke and the heat and the fire was so intense, they were in pretty bad shape when we found them."
Three other children -- boys under 10 -- escaped by jumping out a second-floor window with an infant girl, fire officials said.
"The flames were shooting so fast," Ralph Cameron, who helped catch two of the boys and the baby, told The Detroit News. "I just did what I had to do."
The mother arrived home soon after the fire started at the house, near West Grand on the city's west side, Lauer said.
Neither the mother nor the children were identified.
