Detroit apartment fire kills 6 children

DETROIT - Fire swept through a two-story apartment in a public housing development Friday, killing six children and leaving a 7-month-old boy in critical condition.

The children who died - three boys, ages 2, 4 and 7, and three girls, ages 2, 5 and 6 - were all upstairs when the fire broke out in a first-floor bedroom, fire officials said. The apartment tenant and mother of three of the victims, 25-year-old Juanita Fish, escaped with her 7-month-old son, Jonathan.

Fish was hospitalized in fair condition Friday, and Jonathan was in critical condition.

Fish's sister and her children were visiting, but the sister wasn't in the apartment when the fire started about 10 a.m., Fire Commissioner Charles Wilson said.

Lt. Steve Varnas, of the department's arson section, said the fire began in a mattress but officials hadn't determined what started it.

Smoke detectors in the apartment were working, but Varnas said Fish apparently ignored them because they had sounded inadvertently on Thursday. By the time she realized fire was consuming her apartment, the rooms had filled with thick, black smoke, and escape was nearly impossible, he said.

The apartment is part of the Brewster-Douglas Homes, a public housing complex where Diana Ross grew up. Two units on both sides of the burned apartment suffered fire, water and smoke damage.

John Nelson Jr., executive director of the city Housing Commission, said it was the first major fire in Detroit public housing in six years.