ROBERTA, Ga. — Two people are dead after a house fire in Crawford County, according to Fire Chief Randall Pate.
He said it happened in the 200 block of East Agency Street in Roberta Wednesday morning.
A 21-year-old male and 71-year-old female were killed when the home caught on fire, Pate said.
Residents of the house called the fire department at around 2:15 a.m., but when firefighters arrived, the house was "fully engulfed," according to a press release from the fire department.
Pate believes they know the names of the people who were killed, but they are waiting for the Georgia Crime Lab to identify the victims before releasing their names.
He said there was a large family living in the house and most members of the family survived.
Pate said he helped connect the family to the Red Cross to help them rebuild and he reached out to the fire marshall to investigate the cause of the fire.
According to Pate, this marks the third fatal fire this year in Crawford County. Two people died in each fire, meaning six people died in fires in 2023. Near the end of 2022, two other people died in a house fire in Crawford County.
He says this is the largest increase he has seen in his 30-year career.
Pate says a big part of the problem is the lack of smoke detectors.
"Here's the thing: time is of utmost importance and the more time you have to get out, the better," Pate said. "It is imperative that you have working smoke detectors in the right place of your home."
According to Pate, the home that caught fire Wednesday morning was built in the late 1800s and he believes if they had working smoke detectors, they could have had more time to get out.
"I just really do believe that if they had working smoke detectors, they would have had a few more minutes," Pate said.
He reminds people the location of the smoke detector is very important and that just having a detector "on a bookshelf" is not enough to keep you safe.
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