JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Three children were killed and four other people were critically injured in an early morning townhouse fire in Jacksonville\u2019s Mandarin area Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department crews responded to Windergate Drive just after 5 a.m. and found heavy fire on the first floor of the townhouse and heavy smoke on the second floor.<\/p>\n
Two adults and two children managed to escape before firefighters arrived. All four were taken to the hospital in critical condition.<\/p>\n
Firefighters found three children dead while searching the home.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n The fire destroyed the townhouse and damaged two nearby units. Eleven other people were displaced and are receiving help from the American Red Cross.<\/p>\n The news devastated the children\u2019s family, who are from Albania. A woman who works with the children\u2019s grandmother said the grandmother learned about the fire after arriving at work. The coworker then drove her to the scene.<\/p>\n \u201cShe didn\u2019t know nothing. Just she came in work and the people say what happened,\u201d the coworker said. \u201cJust shocked. She just cry. You can see her.\u201d<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n The damage remained visible hours after the fire. Much of the first floor was destroyed, and the devastation stretched through the back of the home and into the second floor.<\/p>\n Neighbors began placing flowers outside the townhouse as a memorial grew near the scene. Raul Contreras, who said he knew the family, described the loss as heartbreaking.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just so sad,\u201d Contreras said. \u201cReally just a sad thing to lose the children.\u201d<\/p>\n The State Fire Marshal and the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office Homicide Unit are investigating. The cause of the fire has not been determined.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Three children were killed and four other people were critically injured in an early morning…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1026236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[11030,5229,146536,13816,124993,13037,13029,3188,723,124994,11561,7310,8423,410514,425,37632,50,28496,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,213469],"class_list":["post-1027393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action","tag-america","tag-bea","tag-ben_becker","tag-cbs_47","tag-deja","tag-deja_mayfield","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-fox_30","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jso","tag-live_at_6","tag-local","tag-mandarin","tag-news","tag-tanika_hughes","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-yona_gvino"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117167562821818119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}