ST PAUL, Minn. — It has been a deadly start to the year in St. Paul in terms of house fires, with another life being claimed late Wednesday on the city's west side.
St. Paul police and fire crews responded to the 2200 block of Buford Ave. just before midnight after receiving a 911 call. The caller told dispatchers they heard someone inside a burning home yelling "help."
Police squads were the first to arrive and were told by a resident who had escaped the home that someone was still inside. Officers attempted to make entry but were turned back by heavy smoke and heat.
Fire crews set up and quickly put down the fire. They then went inside the structure and located a residence deceased inside a room where the fire appears to have started. Investigators say there were no working smoke detectors near the room where the victim was found.
Two dogs perished in the blaze, and another resident was taken to a local hospital with unspecified injuries.
St. Paul Deputy Fire Chief Roy Mokosso said in a news release that preliminary evidence suggests that smoking was the cause of the fire. He reminds Minnesotans that smoking remains the leading cause of fatal fires in the state.
Thursday's death marks the sixth fire fatality in St. Paul in 2024. Four children died after their family's home on Arkwright Street burned Jan. 3, and a person badly injured in a Jan. 23 kitchen fire inside a house on the 1600 block of Juliet Ave. eventually died from their injuries.
Mokosso says St. Paul averages two to three fire deaths annually, and that the last time the city had six fire fatalities in a year was in 2017. St. Paul is already at that mark less than two months into 2024.
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