2 children among 5 killed in Ohio house fire on Thanksgiving

Five people, including two children, were killed in a mobile home fire in Ohio on Thanksgiving morning, authorities said.

The Ohio Department of Commerce said volunteer firefighters in Athens County were called to a Rainbow Lake Road address south of Athens at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday and found two mobile homes ablaze and an outbuilding also damaged.

Richland Area volunteer firefighters reported that one of the mobile homes was engulfed in flames with a collapsed roof, and they later found five occupants inside deceased.

Brandon Klein of the commerce department said a single occupant made it out of the fire and was taken to a local hospital by emergency responders. The cause of the fire wasn’t immediately known, he said.

The names of the victims haven’t been released. The state fire marshal’s office, which is a division of the commerce department, is investigating along with the county sheriff’s office and the county coroner.

Authorities told WLWT-TV and WOWK-TV that two children were among the five people killed.

“Any kind of fatality, it’s hard. When there’s five and there’s children involved, it adds to it,” Chief Dale Sinclair of the Richland Area Volunteer Fire Department said.

Sinclair said some of the firefighters knew the people who lived at the address, and a debriefing was planned to allow a team “to meet with everyone and try to get as much mental health help as we can.”