ATLANTA -- Firefighters are determining what caused a house fire that took the lives of two people early Thursday morning.
Atlanta Fire was dispatched to a home located on Pope Street SW at 1:05 a.m. for a fire. When firefighters arrived, they saw flames engulfing the two-story home.
Witnesses and neighbors alerted the crews that there could potentially be two people trapped inside the house. Firefighters were unable to enter the house from the first floor because of the heavy flames so they got a ladder to reach one of the windows on the second floor.
When crews were able to get to the window and get inside the home, they located the bodies of an adult male and an adult female, deceased.
According to Sgt. Stafford Cortez, they have reason to believe the two victims are related.
"They did everything they could to go inside to make sure that they could get these two victims but in the industry that we liv in, we understand that we try to do the best we can on every situation, every fire we go to. Every life that we attempt to save is precious to us," said Sgt. Cortez.
"We have some young guys on the job, we are human beings just like everyone else. So sometimes the situation in things like this affect us, but we have to push through, we have to be strong."
Two witnesses who say they saw the fire described the frightening moments they heard screams coming from inside the home.
"Bursting flames. Fire was humongous and it's devastating to know that there was two people actually inside. So, as you can hear the screams, they stopped," Lynn Blake said.
Blake said it was "traumatizing" to hear the victims yelling for help inside the burning home.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation at this time.
