KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Firefighters found the body of a man inside a burning home in Kansas City, Kansas Wednesday morning.
Police say at about 10:30 a.m., neighbors called 911 to come to the home at 27th and Waverly.
Friends and neighbors tell Fox 4 the man in his 70’s was disabled and lived in the home with a caregiver and her two children. Firefighters say the woman was not home at the time the fire started.
“By the time they tried to get into the house, it was too late because the smoke was everywhere and the flames and it was too late. He was already gone,” neighbor Larenda Martin said.
Firefighters arrived within two minutes and found the man in his bedroom in the back of the house. They got him out, tried to revive him, but were not able to. Firefighters say the home did not have working smoke detectors.
Craig Duke, Assistant Fire Chief with the Kansas City, Kansas Fire Department says smoke detectors save lives, but too many people don’t have them. “The last three fires we’ve had this week none of the homes had smoke detectors in them, the one we had over the weekend if it hadn’t been for police officers who happened to just come up on the fire, that could have been worse,” said Duke.
FOX 4’s Matt Stewart talked to another neighbor who said he was the man’s best friend. He says the man was a smoker, so firefighters are investigating that as a potential cause of the fire, along with other possibilities.
Daylight Saving Time ends Sunday at 2 a.m. – the time to change the batteries in your own smoke detectors.
