A 16-year-old girl is dead and her two sisters are fighting for their lives after a fire tore through their Brooklyn house — which had no working smoke detector, fire officials said.
The two-alarm blaze broke out in the three-story East 8th Street home in Prospect Park South at 5:30 a.m. Friday and quickly spread, trapping the sisters on the top floor.
Firefighters found Jasmine Guillaume and her two sisters, Jaima and Kareen Jumelle, both in their 20s, unconscious inside a locked bathroom where the women had tried to escape the flames, one firefighter said.
Guillaume was rushed to Maimonides Medical Center, where she died. The sisters, both in their 20s, were listed in critical condition after one was taken to New York Hospital and the other to Kings County Hospital.
Brooklyn City Councilman Mathieu Eugene said the victims all belong to the same Brooklyn parish he attends, Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church.
“I know them very well,” said Eugene, who described the sisters as “very quiet kids” and their mother as “a hardworking, quiet lady who’s doing the best she can to raise them.”
The victims’ mother, aged 57, was hospitalized with minor injuries, as was a 59-year-old aunt, fire officials said.
Eugene called the fire tragic — “especially . . . [as] everyone is getting ready for the holy season.”
The cause of the fire is under investigation by the fire marshal, but firefighters at the scene said the home had no working fire detectors — which are required by law.
Several distraught people gathered outside the damaged house on Friday as news of the fire’s toll spread — the second fatal fire in a span of seven hours in which a working smoke alarm might have saved a family from devastation.
Two brothers died Thursday night when their Bronx apartment went up in flames because of carelessly discarded smoking materials, officials said. The building on Grand Concourse caught fire at 10:45 p.m. and both brothers later succumbed to their injuries at area hospitals. The apartment had no working smoke detectors, officials said.