Toddler Dies in Mobile Home Fire

An 18-month-old boy died Wednesday after a fire erupted in his family’s mobile home at a rural San Marcos nursery.

Fire officials said the blaze apparently erupted in the single-wide trailer’s stove, burning a baby-sitter on her arms and face. The woman, identified as Thodosea Dominguez, escaped from the trailer, but the child, Jose de los Angeles, died in a back bedroom where he had been sleeping.

The child’s parents, identified as Juan Garcia and Maria de los Angeles, work at the nursery Posie Express in the 3200 block of Twin Oaks Valley Road.

Dominguez, 29, was in serious condition at the UCSD Medical Center burn facility, suffering from smoke inhalation and second-degree burns over 15% of her body, police said.

The boy’s mother was in the nursery’s office when the fire broke out, and Juan Garcia was making deliveries at the time, officials said.

Dan Blusius, general manager of the nursery, said he arrived on the scene from Los Angeles about 1:15 p.m. and saw the mobile home in flames.

“I ran into the office and told them to call the Fire Department,” he said, “but the home was already fully engulfed.”

Firefighters from the San Marcos Fire Protection District arrived within five minutes, Blusius said, but could do little other than to save the adjacent greenhouses. The fire was extinguished in 20 minutes.

Blusius said the couple had worked at his company, a wholesale rose grower, for more than two years.

American Red Cross officials said the baby-sitter had been working for the family for about two weeks.

Three other children, boys aged 13, 8, and 6, were in school at the time of the fire.

Gloria Kilian of the Carlsbad-based Trauma Intervention Programs said the nonprofit agency is soliciting donations of bedding, food, clothing and cash for the family.

“They lost everything they had,” she said.

The Red Cross will put the family up in a nearby motel for a week.

It was the second residential fire within a week in northern San Diego County in which children have died. Last Friday, a 15-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl who were cousins died when a fire caused by an electrical short swept through their mothers’ home in Encinitas.