A fire that killed two Maryland sisters while they were on vacation is under investigation
BALTIMORE -- A summer vacation home in the Hamptons is at the center of a Potomac family's heartache and the focus of a fire investigation.
That is because two Marylander sisters died early Wednesday morning in a house fire in Suffolk County, New York, police said.
Jillian and Lindsay Wiener, from Potomac, Maryland, were on vacation in the Long Island town of Noyack with their brother Zachary, mother, Alisa, and father, Lewis, according to the Southampton Police Department.
About 3:35 a.m., town authorities received a call about a fire at the home on Spring Lane. Fire departments from five different towns responded to the blaze.
Lewis described waking up in his first-floor room to the noise of glass shattering and alerted the family to get out of the house.
Both Alisa and Lewis escaped. When they realized the children had not gotten out, Lewis attempted to re-enter the house but flames from a fire prevented him from doing so.
Zachary escaped by leaping out of a second-story window, but 21-year-old Jillian and 19-year-old Lindsay couldn't escape the fast-moving fire.
Fire personnel found the girls inside the home. They were then taken to SUNY Southampton Hospital, where they died from their injuries, police said.
Jillian was headed to her senior year at the University of Michigan and Lindsay was set to return to Tulane University as a sophomore.
"It's so scary. I can't even imagine," one woman in New York said. "You come here to have a good time not to–you would never think about something like that."
Investigators are attempting to determine the cause of the fire.