Child, adult found dead in Tempe mobile home fire; 3 others later pronounced dead
TEMPE, Ariz. - A fire at a Tempe mobile home park late Sunday night left a child and an adult dead, and three others, including another child, in critical condition.
The child and an adult died later that night at the hospital.
the final remaining victim, 22-year-old Valerie Magana-Gonzalez was pronounced dead at 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 13.
The fire broke out on Aug. 25 near Kyrene and Baseline Roads.
Tempe firefighters and police responded to the scene and found a mobile home engulfed in flames.
An adult and child were found dead inside the mobile home. They were not identified.
Two other adults and a child were transported to a hospital in critical condition.
"Smoke detectors really are the key to get the people out of a home safely," said Tempe Fire Medical Rescue Department Assistant Chief Andrea Glass. "Those are the biggest ways to get people out of the home and protect them from these types of fires. So we don't know if they were working or not. We have done smoke detector walks in this community, but I can't tell you if we had them working in this home, and we are investigating if this home had working smoke detectors."
Investigators are working to determine what sparked the fire.
Neighbors react to the tragedy
Neighbors say the fire ignited quickly, the blaze was hot, and the flames reached as high as the palm trees behind the home.
Inside Baseline Mobile Home Park, residents watched their neighbors' home burst into flames in a matter of minutes.
"It looked massive," a neighbor said. "Because 30 minutes before that, I was walking the dog and there were no flames, so it happened really fast. Whatever it is, it was very flammable."
Neighbors yelled at each other in the confusion, afraid the wind would spread the fire to other homes.
They said you could feel the heat from the flames radiating across the park.
Jaqueline Castillo says she quickly called 911.
"It was scary because we didn’t know what was going to happen," she said.
Tempe fire and police arrived and quickly and got to work, successfully containing the fire to one home, but it was too late.
"Their little girl would wave at my little two-year-old," a neighbor said. "That’s the part that hits the most. It’s heartbreaking."
The tragedy also has an air of mystery surrounding it. For most of the day, Tempe Police treated this as a crime scene, with a command post set up and yellow tape.
There's still no update on what was behind the blaze, or who this family is.