Four young children hospitalized after being rescued from an apartment fire in West Chester

By WLWT Digital Staff

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    WEST CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WLWT) — Four young children are in the hospital after they were rescued from an apartment fire in West Chester on Saturday afternoon.

According to officials, firefighters were dispatched to the Meadow Ridge apartment complex located at 5259 Aster Park Dr. around 12:17 p.m.

West Chester Fire Chief Rick Prinz said the fire was limited to just one apartment where the four children were found inside.

Although the children are alive and breathing, Prinz says they have a long road ahead of them.

The four victims that have been transported to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital that have been listed under critical condition included a 5-month-old, 1-year-old, 5-year-old, and an 8-year-old.

The names and genders of the victims have not been released at this time. It is also unclear if an adult was home with the children at the time of the fire.

Investigators have been sifting through the scene to figure out what caused the blaze that left the children in critical condition.

“When we got here, people were standing outside telling us that the car was gone, it appears that nobody was home. We went to work. We always do a search no matter what report we get, so we immediately started a search and immediately started finding victims,” said West Chester fire Chief Rick Prinz.

The children rescued by firefighters were provided care at the scene, including a 1-year-old who received CPR.

“The four victims were brought outside and received advanced life support measures from our department. One of the four were not breathing and did not have a pulse and the other three had a difficult time breathing,” Prinz said.

Neighbors were home when the fire started and one neighbor said she caught a majority of what was happening on her camera phone. She says that she wishes they knew children were actually in the home because they would have done more.

Someone actually kicked down a door upstairs getting other neighbors out and when acquiring about the residence where the children were found, they said the mother’s car was not there, so they assumed the children were not there either.

“I stood there and watched her pull up and when she pulled up, she was trying to get in and they were trying to stop her. She was trying to explain to them that there were kids in there,” one neighbor said. “I literally stood there recording and I saw them pull out the stretcher and thought this can’t be good.”

Three other units suffered smoke damage due to the fire.

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