- Ten people died in a house fire in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
- When the firefighters arrived to tackle the blaze, Harold Baker realized his family was inside.
- He lost his son, daughter, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, three grandchildren, and two other relatives.
A firefighter called to the scene of a huge house fire in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, discovered that the ten people, three children, and seven adults, killed were members of his family.
Harold Baker, a Nescopeck Volunteer Fire Company firefighter, was in the first fire engine that arrived at the blaze. The original callout gave the address of the home next door, but as the engine turned into the street, he realized that it was his relatives' house being consumed by the flames, reported The Washington Post.
He told AP that the deceased were his son, daughter, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, three grandchildren, and two other relatives. Three survived.
Pennsylvania State Police has identified the deceased as Dale Baker, 19, Star Baker, 2, David Daubert, 79, Brian Daubert, 4, Shannon Daubert, 45, Laura Daubert, 47, and Marian Slusser, 54.
Baker said he tried to get into the house, but his fellow firefighters stopped him because it was too dangerous.
"I tried to get in as fast as I could," he said. "I tried three times, and then they realized whose house it was and why I was trying to go in there, and they yanked me off," he told The New York Times. His colleagues told him. "'No, you got to get the hell out of here,'" Baker said.
When they found the body of his 19-year-old son, Dale, who had taken after his father and was also a volunteer firefighter, the team draped a flag over his body. "They took him out as a fallen firefighter," he said.
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the fire, according to the police.
A man who lives two doors down from the house described the blaze in the two-story house to The New York Times, saying, "Boy, it was just a horrendous fire," explaining it spread rapidly from the porch after a loud explosion.
"It was an inferno. God bless those children that were in there. They didn't have a prayer," he said.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has said he is "heartbroken" by the incident and has thanked first responders who arrived at the scene.