3 Killed, 4 Hurt as Fire Strikes Crowded Home

Three people were killed and at least four others were injured Monday when flames exploded through a two-story house that was believed to be home to as many as five families.

One man, who carried an infant in his arms, and at least three women jumped to safety from second-floor windows.

One of the women who had climbed to the roof of an adjacent garage at first balked at jumping from the building, screaming instead for someone to help rescue “the children, the babies.”

Santa Ana fire officials said a woman and two children died in the blaze, which broke out shortly after 4:30 p.m. in the 3700 block of South Alder Street. The names of the dead were not immediately available.

But Marisela Fierro, 24, who had moved to the Alder Street house just three days earlier, said she was certain that her son, Jesus Castenada, 5, had perished in the blaze.

It was Fierro who, after raising a window in her smoke-filled, second-floor bedroom and clambering to the garage roof, screamed to firefighters and police on the ground to help rescue the children inside.

While leaning out the window just before heeding the pleas of firefighters below to jump to safety, “I could still hear my son’s screams,” Fierro said.

Hours after the flames had been extinguished, the small woman stood bewildered and shivering in the cold night, still waiting for someone to retrieve her son’s body.

Meanwhile, Santa Ana Fire Department spokesman Karl Ellman said authorities were having difficulty determining the identities of the dead and injured.

Three of the injured were taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, including 4-month-old and 7-year-old boys, who were being treated for smoke inhalation and were listed in fair condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

An unidentified woman was in guarded condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit with severe injuries probably sustained when when she jumped to escape the flames.

A fourth victim, a 21-year-old woman, was being treated for broken bones at Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana. Her name was not released.