[pullquote]“I think if there had been detectors they would have gotten out,” said Todd March, the city’s fire chief. “As it was, they had no chance.” [/pullquote]Lehigh Valley’s ‘The Morning Call’ reports… The Pottsville house where two adults and four children died in a raging fire lacked smoke detectors and had a wood stove lit late Sunday to ward off the unseasonable chill.

Three bedrooms were above a second-floor kitchen, where the fire started. Just one door led to the lone staircase leading down from the bedrooms.

“I think if there had been detectors they would have gotten out,” said Todd March, the city’s fire chief. “As it was, they had no chance.” March said fire inspectors have found no smoke alarms in the charred home, and no neighbors heard alarms.

Initial emergency radio dispatches said one adult and four children were trapped in the fire, and the house was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived. Unofficial emergency radio dispatches indicate at least one firefighter was injured.

When firefighters arrived, the back of the house was ablaze and the front of the house had flames shooting out the second-floor and attic windows.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.