A fire early Wednesday morning in San Francisco's Mission District resulted in life-threatening injuries to all five members of a family rescued from the blaze.
San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Mindy Talmadge said the family lived in a second-floor apartment above a liquor store at 24th Street and Treat Avenue. All five people -- a 40-year-old man, a 37-year-old woman and their three children, ages 16, 13 and 6 -- were taken to San Francisco General Hospital.
CPR was performed on three of the victims -- the father and two of the children -- and Talmadge said "pulses were regained on all three." The mother and one of the children suffered what Talmadge described as inhalation injuries.
A neighbor, Marlowe Riley, said that she had seen firefighters attempting to resuscitate a man she knew as the proprietor of the liquor store.
"Hopefully he was resuscitated and he's OK," she said, noting that CPR efforts continued as paramedics drove the man from the scene.
"My main concern is for the kids," Riley said.
Talmadge said the cause of the fire, which broke out about 4:30 a.m., wasn't immediately known. But she said firefighters encountered two people who appeared to be sleeping in the liquor store and were unable to get out because of a security gate.
"There were gates that were closed and padlocked in front of that liquor store, so they were trapped inside," Talmadge said. "Crews were able to obviously unlock that padlock, and those two individuals fled the scene."
