KENTWOOD, Mich — The City of Kentwood's Fire Chief, Brent Looman, is providing new details following the deadly fire Monday that killed two people in Kentwood.
A total of 11 people were inside the home on 48th Street at the time of the fire, which broke out just before 3:30 a.m. on Monday.
Two of the people inside the home died, two others were treated for smoke inhalation. The remaining residents inside the home made it out safely.
"We certainly have a lot of heartfelt sorrow," Looman told 13 ON YOUR SIDE.
This is the city of Kentwood's first deadly fire of 2022. The chief says the fire appears to have started in the back of the home on the first floor.
"It's very rough for our crews, as well as for the families," Looman said. "This is not the result [we wanted], we're out there to the rescue people and it's a very unfortunate situation."
Investigators are still looking into if the home had working smoke detectors and what exactly caused the fire.
Looman said there are power cords, a space heater and power strips in the area of origin but an exact cause will take months to determine.
"We're a long ways from the investigation begin over. It's going to take an electrical engineer next through the insurance company to come in and take a look at all the electrical that's in there and try to determine what is actually the the origin of the fire," he said.
Looman says its fire department just added two firefighters per shift this year, so that means there are between 14-16 firefighters on staff per shift.
When firefighters arrived, the house had flames coming from it. About 25 firefighters responded to the fire including Kentwood and Cutlerville Fire.
Looman said the first crew on scene, which was paramedics, went to the second floor and tried to get into the second floor windows.
As the weather gets colder, the chief has a warning for families who use space heaters.
"We highly recommend they're plugged directly into an outlet and not into any type of power cord and definitely follow the manufacturer's recommendations with the use of that heater and keep at least three feet of clear space around a space heater," Looman said.
The fire department says the first fire unit was on scene within four minutes of the 911 call and paramedics were on scene within the first two minutes of being called.
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