House Fire Kills 10, 6 Of Them Children

Fire swept through a one-story house early Tuesday, killing 10 people, six children and four adults from an extended family. Two people managed to escape the blaze, one uninjured.

"It's terrible," said Dwight Mason, a neighbor who says he tried to rescue the people in the home. "I knew there were children in the house, and you want to do something."

"I kept hearing them kids hollering and screaming and stuff," he told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Most of the victims were dead by the time firefighters reached them, Nelson County Coroner Field Houghlin said. One person was rescued, but died later of injuries.

Bardstown is about 40 miles south of Louisville.

The last two bodies discovered in the burned brick home were children, both found under the bodies of adults, said Emergency Medical Services director Joe Prewitt. The relationships and ages of the 12 people in the house and the conditions of the survivors were not released.

The five-room, one-story house was little more than a brick shell Tuesday morning, the newspaper reported. The entire middle section of the roof was gone, and every window was blown out.

Cheryl Johnson of Bardstown told the Courier-Journal that the house was her sister's, and she believes some of her sister's grandchildren were in the house, and possibly some of the owner's children as well.

"I'm shocked," she said. "I'm numb. I just don't know what I'm going to do."

Fire investigators were only able to enter the rubble after daybreak to search for what started the blaze, reports Paul Miles of CBS radio affiliate WHAS-AM. They're not sure why none of the victims was able to get out of the home.

The fire was first reported about 3 a.m. local time. Houghlin said autopsies were planned on the victims.

"It hurts," neighbor Bennie Stone said. "The part that hurts more is them kids. It's a shock to me."

Despite the bitter cold, neighbors gathered outside the shell of the home to console one another.

"It went up pretty quick," said neighbor Julie Wagoner.

The adult victims included Sherry Maddox and Johnny Litsey, who had lived together for many years.

"Everybody liked Johnny," Tommie Hurst Jr., owner of Bardstown Mills, a Purina feed store where Litsey worked, told the Courier-Journal. "He was a loving father and a loving grandfather."

"Anytime you lose any lives in a fire it's a devastating loss," said Bardstown mayor Richard Heaton.

Another deadly house fire broke out early Tuesday in rural Maryville, Tenn., killing four children. The parents escaped from the burning home with a 2-year-old, but the other children, ages 7 to 14, died in the blaze, said Blount County, Tenn., Sheriff James Berrong.