VIRGINIA BEACH — A local firefighter and some neighbors rescued a family of five after their mobile home caught fire Tuesday morning.
It happened shortly before 2 a.m., said Art Kohn Jr., spokesman for the Virginia Beach Fire Department.
Crews were dispatched to the County View Mobile Home Park near the intersection of Holland Drive and Euclid Road.
There, crews encountered heavy “heavy smoke and flames coming from a mobile home on Spartan Street,” Kohn said.
“With the help of neighbors, two adults and one 7-year-old girl were already outside the burning trailer but told firefighters that two children were still inside,” Kohn said. “Despite the intense heat, smoke and flames, a firefighter immediately entered the home and located the children. He found a 2-year-old girl and passed her through an open window to fellow firefighters.”
That firefighter then found a second child, a 5-year-old boy, and passed him through the same opening to firefighters outside.
“At that point the fire and heat had become so intense, that the firefighter had to dive out the window to save himself, falling a distance of about six feet,” Kohn said. “The little girl was unresponsive at the time she was placed in the ambulance and all three kids were taken to the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk.”
The two adults were taken to Norfolk General. Information on their condition was not immediately available.
The firefighter who entered the burning mobile home to rescue the children was not injured. Kohn did not identify him.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but Kohn said investigators “believe the fire was accidental in nature.”
The mobile home was destroyed.
Kohn said there were no working smoke alarms inside the home. A dog was found live in a back bedroom.
