Family mourns 3 people killed in southwest Atlanta house fire

“To unlock from the inside in a rush and then with the fire going and with the smoke, it probably was a little too much,” Austin Moore told Channel 2.

Fire officials believe the blaze could have been sparked by a bolt of lightning. They also say the home had a alarm system, but it is not known if the smoke detectors were operable.

The fire was reported shortly after 2 a.m. in a split-level home on Revere Road, in a neighborhood that sits between I-285 and Fairburn Road.

Atlanta fire Deputy Chief Randall Slaughter said firefighters responding to the 2:15 a.m. call found “heavy fire conditions.”

Two of the victims “were discovered relatively early in the incident in the downstairs area,” Slaughter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The third fire victim was found upstairs in the bedroom area.”

Slaughter said that while the cause is still under investigation, “we are leaning to (lightning) being the cause. Several neighbors have described to me a loud sound which appears to have been a lightning strike,” he said.

Elaine Ogletree said she saw her next-door neighbor’s home consumed by flames.

“It was raining, and I heard a loud boom, twice, real loud,” she said. “I got back into bed, and a neighbor called me and told me, ‘You need to get out of there because Nina’s house is burning down.’ I came out and fire was everywhere.

“It burned up so quick. It was impossible for them to get out.”

Slaughter called the deaths “a real tragedy.

“Everything we do from how we purchase apparatus to how we place our fire stations to how we train our firefighters gears us towards saving persons, and whenever we cannot perform that action, it’s a sad day for us.”

Ogletree said “it’s going to be hard for the neighbors,” too.

“They were the neighbors you would like to live next door to.”

—Reporter Michelle E. Shaw contributed to this report.