The deaths of two children in a devastating house fire has been ruled as “a tragic and devastating accident”.
Louis Busuioc, aged five, and his three year old sister Desir passed away three days after being pulled from the blaze at their home in Preston, on April 8, 2022.
A coroner told the inquest the children had opened a bedroom door with a coat hanger and began playing with a lighter.
Emergency services were called to the scene at 7.52pm after a neighbour spotted flames in the front living room window. During the inquest it emerged that the siblings had been upstairs with their mother, Lorena, who was asleep.
At some point the children managed to unlock the bedroom door using a coat hanger and went downstairs. It is believed that one of them began to play with a lighter and the sofa was set alight.
Lorena was woken by the smoke and frantically tried to push her children out of an upstairs window but they resisted. She went first in the hope she could pull them to safety, LancashireLive reports.
Neighbours quickly arrived and made a makeshift platform and begged Lorena to jump, trusting someone would save her children, she jumped.
Firefighters who arrived at the scene “put their own lives at risk” and “disregarded protocol” in a desperate attempt to save two children from a house fire. Tragically, by the time they were rescued, both children had sustained “unsurvivable” brain injuries.
Dr Adam Nicholls, a consultant in Paediatric Intensive Care Medicine at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, told the inquest the damage was already done by the time the children were pulled from the fire.
“We see very few children who make it to intensive care following smoke inhalation,” Dr Nicholls said.
“The damage is done even before children can be removed from a house fire. My personal feeling is that nothing would have altered the outcome for these children unfortunately.”
The inquest heard testimonies from numerous police officers, paramedics and firefighters who dealt with the chaotic scene. Area Coroner Chris Long concluded that although there was a slight delay in the arrival of paramedics, it would “not have made any difference”, given Dr Nicholls’ evidence.
He commended the emergency services for their valiant efforts to save the children. “The fire crews departed from their own guidelines, putting their own safety at risk, in order to find the children as quickly as possible,” Mr Long added.
The coroner told the inquest: “Whilst I have found some elements of the response were not as they should have been I have not found that any of those elements have contributed to death.”
Taking a moment to pay tribute to the firefighters involved, the coroner stated: “The response from the fire and rescue service was incredibly swift. Had it not been for the bravery and courage of the firefighters who attended and who put their lives at risk it is likely that the children would not have been rescued when they were. I have not found the fault of any individual or organisation that has contributed to the deaths in any way. What occurred was a tragic and devastating accident.
“Children experiment. I am sure many in the courtroom will remember being told by their parents not to play with matches or indeed saying that as a parent. Experience is, of course, how we learn.
“Here the children had been warned about playing with lighters but, I repeat, children experiment, and given the evidence I have outlined I am satisfied that the fire was started by one of the children with the lighter. There is however no evidence whatsoever that this was done intentionally to set fire to the house. They did not appreciate the risk that the sofa could catch fire in the way that it did. They did not intend it to catch fire. In short, they accidentally set fire to the sofa, which led to the fire starting.”
The coroner ruled the deaths as accidental, stating that the children “died on April 11, 2022, at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital in Manchester as a result of hypoxic ischemic brain injury caused by smoke inhalation as a result of a fire”.
He also noted: “The fire was started accidentally by one of the children at the property playing with a lighter. The fire spread incredibly quickly preventing an exit from the property.”
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