Two bodies, believed to be those of children, have been found inside a Blue Mountains home destroyed by a fire which four other children and their father managed to escape.<\/p>\n
The family of six children, aged from three to 16, and their father, who is in his 30s, were inside the home in the small town of Bowen Mountain in the foothills of the Blue Mountains when the home caught fire in the early hours of Monday morning.<\/p>\n
Emergency services were called to the home just after 2.10am, arriving around five to eight minutes later. About 60 firefighters from Fire and Rescue and the Rural Fire Service were needed to bring the blaze under control.<\/p>\n
NSW Fire and Rescue assistant commissioner, Andrew Faunce, said during a press conference on Monday morning that firefighters were unable to enter the home because of the intensity of the blaze. Neighbours had also tried to help before fire fighters arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a very, very fully developed fire at the point in time, and with structural collapse already occurring through the roof cavity, it was just deemed too unsafe for firefighters to make entry, to conduct any kind of rescue or search at that point in time,\u201d Faunce said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirefighters at the time, deployed some defensive measures and and started to bring the fire under control \u2026 And then after about 3:30am this morning, firefighters went into a more of an offensive searching of the premises as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police superintendent Nadine Roberts said two bodies were located, one upstairs and another downstairs, \u201cbelieved to be that of the two children\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can appreciate, it, is a coroner\u2019s investigation, and we can\u2019t confirm those details until a formal investigation has taken place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Roberts said the four other children and their father were in hospital being treated for smoke inhalation and minor burns, \u201cbut otherwise they are okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family was due to move to Queensland on Monday, police said. The mother was already on her way to their new home and so was not inside when the fire struck.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s on her way back to be with the family,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n
Emergency services were still investigating the cause of the fire and said late on Monday morning it was not being treated as suspicious.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur thoughts and prayers are with the families, with the siblings and with the broader community,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly confronting situation, not only for the community and the families, but also the first responders who had to attend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two bodies, believed to be those of children, have been found inside a Blue Mountains home destroyed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-633233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}