7 Kids Die in Pa. Farmhouse Fire
(ABC) A deadly fire at a farmhouse near Harrisburg, Pa., killed seven children overnight as their mother milked cows in the barn and their father napped in his truck between milk deliveries.
State trooper Tom Pinkerton was on the scene, in Blaine, a rural Mennonite community in Pennsylvania, about 20 miles outside Harrisburg. Pinkerton described the scene to “GMA” as “devastating.”
Investigators believe the fire broke out after 10 p.m., about 15 minutes after the father left for a milk delivery. The mother had just gone to the barn to milk cows. One child, the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, who had been watching television, smelled smoke and managed to run out to the barn to alert her mother.
The mother couldn’t get back into the house, and frantically banged on the windows. She ran to a neighbor’s house but no one answered the door, so she tried another neighbor’s house and successfully called 911.
They then found the father, who had fallen asleep in his delivery truck a short distance away. They woke him and returned to their house to find it engulfed in flames.
The county coroner said smoke inhalation killed all seven children — six daughters and one son, who ranged in age from a 7 months to 11 years old.
Fire officials have been sifting through debris but said the cause of the fire had not yet been determined.
Investigators spoke to the father, describing him as “distraught.”
