Authorities have found dead adults and children within a partially burned house in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood.
Officers were called to a home near the Woodland Park Zoo at 8:40 a.m. after an 11-year-old child told 911 that a dead person was in her house according to Seattle Police.
Once police arrived, they realized that the building was on fire and that the front door had been blocked.
The firefighters then began working with police to extinguish the flames and ensure that the neighbors living to the East and West of the fire were safe.
Once the fire was “knocked down” after about 45 minutes, crews entered the house and found multiple dead bodies. First responders found “several” dead adults in the building along with a dead infant, child, and dog acording to Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz and Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins.
The fire mostly burned the front of the building where one of the adult’s bodies was found.
Police have not yet confirmed the ages of the victims and do not currently know how the fire started. It is also not known if the dead victims and 11-year-old survivor were related.
Police Chief Adrian Diaz says that one of their highest priorities is to make sure that the surviving child gets the resources she needs to recover from the traumatic event.
“Our hearts and prayers are with the child that is alive as well as those that are deceased,” said Diaz “We are trying to make sure that the child does have a healthy recovery.”
According to authorities, officers will continue to work with Seattle Fire to determine the cause of the inferno and how the victims died.