Lockport, New York: One Dead and One Seriously Injured in Park Avenue House Fire

One person died and another suffered serious burns in a house fire on Park Avenue in Lockport, New York, early Sunday. Crews responded to the home at 516 Park Avenue at about 3:30 a.m. and found heavy fire on both the first and second floors, WIVB News 4 reported. The Buffalo News described the early morning fire as one that devastated the Park Avenue home. Lockport is a city in Niagara County, northeast of Buffalo, and its firefighters worked the fire in the dark hours before Sunday morning.

The rescue attempt

Firefighters searched for a person who was trapped on the first floor of the home. WKBW 7 News reported that crews entered the building to look for the trapped occupant, but conditions inside the home made the search hard. The occupant was removed from the home unconscious. Despite lifesaving efforts, the person was pronounced dead, WKBW reported. Officials had not released the name of the person who died in the reports published on Sunday, and this report does not name that person.

One seriously burned, one escapes

A second occupant of the home suffered serious burns and was transported to Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, according to the WKBW account carried in a Western New York headline roundup. The Buffalo News and WIVB both reported that one resident was killed and another was injured. A third resident escaped from the home with a dog and was evaluated at the scene, WKBW reported. The reports did not say how many people were in the home in total, and they did not give the age or condition details of the person who died beyond the account of the rescue.

What officials have not said

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, and officials had announced no cause, no ruling on where the fire started, and no names in the Sunday reports. There was no report of firefighters being injured. For Park Avenue neighbors, the fire is the kind of overnight call that brings a whole street out of bed: crews arrived to a home already burning on two floors, and one of the people inside did not come out alive.

Lockport firefighters and investigators are expected to work through the home to find where the fire began. Until officials release a cause, the facts of this fire stay short and plain. A home at 516 Park Avenue caught fire at about 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, November 1. One occupant died, one was seriously burned and taken to a Buffalo hospital, and one got out with a dog.