Two people are dead after a family said a girl playing with a lighter started a fire at a Raytown home near 57th and Blue Ridge Cutoff.
Fire officials have not issued an official cause as the state fire marshal investigates, but the family told 41 Action News an 11-year-old girl was playing with a lighter in the back bedroom of the home when a mattress caught fire.
Family members tried to extinguish the fire with water, but it only got worse.
The first report of the flames came in around 5 a.m. Raytown Fire Battalion Chief Ty Helphrey said his crews arrived within five minutes of the initial call to find the home fully involved.
There were eight people inside the home, including five children.
"I believe most of them self-extricated prior to the first company's arrival, unfortunately knowing that they had friends or family members inside," said Helphrey.
The family told 41 Action News the children’s grandfather, Andrew Fry, and a man named John Lester Newman were both killed.
Newman reportedly helped get the kids out of the house before going back in to help Fry.
Both bodies were found in the back bedroom, where the fire started.
There have been no other injuries reported.
“One of my nieces, the one that caused the fire, may have to go through a lot of counseling, but I’m just asking the community and everyone out there to just pray for the family and that they heal. Nobody is blaming anyone because accidents do happen,” Cyndi Stone told 41 Action News.
Crews say the home did have fire detectors.
The Raytown Fire Protection District was assisted by the Kansas City Fire Department.
Raytown hadn’t seen any fire-related deaths for 10 years, but since February 2016, there have been six fire-related deaths.
In February 2016, two people were killed in an apartment fire at 61st and Raytown Road.
A woman was pulled out of a house fire in December 2016. 41 Action News Investigators did a story on the length of time it took for an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
About two months ago, a husband and father was killed in a house fire at 65th Street. Fire Chief Matt Mace said he was killed when he went back inside his burning home to try to save his dog.
The department said it’s been hard on the firefighters.
“The guys internalize that. They feel like they didn't really do their job even though there was nothing really they could do here that would've stopped this from happening,” said Raytown Deputy Fire Chief Mike Hunley.
Hunley also said the fire crews have not been doing anything different that would've created the uptick.
He said many of the fires were started different ways.
Helphrey said it is very important that people do not run back into burning buildings. The temperatures can reach up to between 1,200 and 1,500 degrees inside a residential home, and there is no way to survive that.
