Dawn fire in Urdaneta City leaves 6 dead as probe continues

URDANETA CITY — The cause of a pre-dawn fire that gutted two houses and killed six people, including two children, in Barangay Nancayasan on Monday remains under investigation, police said.

A belated police report identified the victims as two 11-year-old girls, two women aged 72 and 59, and two men aged 45 and 42.

According to the report, at around 2 a.m. on Monday, a 36-year-old woman noticed smoke coming from the ground-floor kitchen. When she went downstairs, the area was already filled with smoke, and the fire had spread rapidly.

The Bureau of Fire Protection declared the fire under control at 4:45 a.m., but both houses had already been razed, and the six residents had died.

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One of the houses was owned by a woman based in Hawaii, while the other belonged to a 63-year-old resident of another barangay./coa