2 Children Die as House Goes Up ‘Like Tinderbox’ : Fire: CHP officers who were passing by saved one youngster from the flames, which engulfed the Encinitas home before firefighters at a station two houses away could react.

Two young cousins were killed shortly after midnight Friday when an Encinitas home erupted in flames, but two passing California Highway Patrol officers rescued a third child before they were beaten back by the smoke, heat and flames.

A 21-year-old woman, who lived in an upstairs unit and was unrelated to the two families that shared the downstairs quarters, escaped after hearing the shouts of the officers.

The two victims’ mothers, who are sisters, were not home when the fire broke out. They arrived more than an hour later to find firefighters preparing to enter the home to look for bodies.

The wood-frame, 60-year-old home lacked smoke detectors and erupted “like a tinderbox,” said Steve Marvin, a spokesman for the Encinitas Fire Protection District. Even though a neighborhood fire station is only two houses away, the home was fully engulfed in flames by the time firefighters could react to the dispatch call.

Killed were Monife Meyers, listed as 2 years old by the county coroner’s office and 3 years old by the Encinitas Fire Department, and Ayikwei Scruggs, 15.

CHP Officers Annette Hirschi, 32, and Tom Greenstone, 29, were halfway through their overnight shift of cruising Interstate 5 between Del Mar and Carlsbad and had just left a gas station at Interstate 5 and Leucadia Boulevard, next door to the house, when the fire erupted at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

“Our unit was pointed directly at the house while we were at the station,” Hirschi said. “But there was nothing wrong at the time.”

As the partners drove across Leucadia Boulevard to the east side of I-5 to take the northbound on-ramp to the freeway, Greenstone looked over his left shoulder and noticed, in the clear night sky, smoke from where they had just come. “We thought maybe it was steam from an overheated car,” Hirschi said.

They backed off the on-ramp, returned to the gas station and saw the house next door ablaze. As Hirschi called her dispatcher to alert firefighters and then grabbed a fire extinguisher from the vehicle’s trunk, Greenstone ran to the back of the house and saw a room fully engulfed in flames, he said.

He returned to the front of the house and saw that a glass sliding door was open a crack. He opened it and fell on all fours to avoid the smoke, which had already filled the room down to within 18 inches of the floor, he said.

“I could hear two kids crying, wheezing and coughing,” he said. “And I could make out two beds in the room. But I was totally overcome by the smoke, and I had to get out.”

Greenstone staggered back outdoors, and Hirschi, who had been yelling for anyone inside the home to get out, then entered the same room. “I was using my flashlight and saw a pair of white shoes,” she said. “The girl stood up in bed, into the smoke, so I grabbed her down and got outside. The smoke was so thick I thought I was going to vomit.”

The girl rescued by Hirschi was identified as Ayida Aganaku, 10, the sister of the younger victim.

Greenstone tried again to enter, but by then the ceiling had started to collapse, windows in the home were exploding, and the rush of oxygen turned the bedroom into an inferno.

“The place was going up like a blowtorch,” Greenstone said.

“There was nothing else we could have done,” Hirschi said.

Susan Fletcher, the occupant of the upstairs room, who said she was awakened by the yelling and the officers’ flashlights, escaped down an outside staircase. Firefighters from two doors away arrived soon after.

“I woke up and it was really blurry. I wear contacts and I kept blinking; I kept trying to blink out the blurriness,” Fletcher said.

Even after she escaped, Fletcher did not realize that the haze that filled her one-bedroom apartment and the gas station lot next door was smoke from the fire, she said.

Fletcher, who moved in two months ago, lost everything except her cat, Groucho, who apparently ran out the front door she had left open when she fled.

“I don’t own anything now except my car and my clothes that I was wearing when I was asleep,” she said from the Encinitas motel where the American Red Cross had placed her.

More than an hour after the fire, Ayikwei Scruggs’ mother, Sharon Scruggs, and Monife Meyers’ mother, whose first name was not known by authorities, arrived home.

“They were walking up the street and they started yelling, ‘That’s my house! That’s my house!’ ” said Lee Ann Donnelly, owner of the service station, who arrived at the scene shortly after the fire started. “A fireman or a sheriff’s deputy grabbed onto them and held them.”

Authorities said it was unclear why the two mothers had left the three children alone at that hour, although there was one report that the two were returning home from San Diego after working as caterers.

Fletcher said it was unusual for the women to arrive home later than 11 p.m. Friends told her the two had to work late Thursday night, she said.

After the fire was out, firefighters entered the house and discovered first the body of the younger victim in the front bedroom, then the body of the 15-year-old boy on the floor of the back bedroom, next to his bed.

Investigators believe the fire began when aging electrical wiring in a flexible metal conduit shorted and arced, igniting ceiling material in the back of the house, said Marvin, the Encinitas Fire Protection District spokesman.

“People in the home had complained that they were having electrical problems, with breakers tripping, especially when it rained,” he said.

Fletcher, a customer service representative for Arrowhead Drinking Water Co., said her apartment had a history of electrical problems, adding that she had no power for the first three days she lived there.

Officials speculated that, even as quickly as the fire spread, the children’s lives might have been saved if there had been smoke detectors in the home.

“But, without them, they were doomed,” Marvin said.

The two mothers and the surviving 10-year-old stayed with friends Friday, authorities said.

Neighbors said the two sisters and their three children moved into the home in November, reportedly after their previous home was destroyed by fire.

“I knew them well enough to talk to them over the fence, but they were quiet and kept to themselves,” said Lori McGown, who lived next door and was awakened by the barking of her dog, then saw her own house cast in orange light from the blaze.

“When I saw how fast that house went up, like a torch, I didn’t think anyone could have gotten out,” McGown said.

Employees at the service station on the other side of the house said they knew the family only by sight, as members came over to buy soda from the vending machines. “We’d all ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhh’ over the baby,” one employee said.

Fire officials said the same home caught fire 10 to 15 years ago, but they did not remember the cause of that blaze.

The owners of the home could not be reached for comment; the property was listed for sale for commercial development.

The two CHP officers said they had mixed emotions about their rescue attempt--thankful that one child had been saved but saddened by the deaths of two others. And they said they are not looking for personal credit.

“Any other officer would have done the same thing,” Greenstone said.

“ Anyone would have done the same thing,” Hirschi said.