2 Girls Die In Kitsap County Fire -- Fast-Moving Blaze At House Called Suspicious

A 3-year-old boy in her arms, fire spreading around her, Debbie Lincoln could hear her youngest daughter's cries for help.

But rising flames blocked her view. The mother of five could not find 4-year-old Brittany.

"She was screaming, `Help me, Mommy!' " said the girl's aunt, Lori Loftin, 22. "They couldn't get to her. They couldn't find her. They could hear her screaming, but they couldn't find her."

Brittany and her sister, Jodi, 12, died early yesterday when a blaze swept through their wood-frame home in the Navy Yard City area just west of Bremerton.

The 3-year-old boy, Paul LaValley, was taken to Harrison Hospital and then transferred to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he was in serious condition today.

Kitsap County Fire District 7 officials had not determined the cause of the blaze by this morning. Themedical examiner said Lincoln and a man who lived in the home were awake at the time it occurred.

Nine children were also in the home: Lincoln's five children, her roommate's 3-year-old son and three others who stayed the night, Loftin said. The other children woke Jodi, then made their way outside. No one noticed Jodi had not followed them until it was too late, Loftin said.

The girl made it to the base of a stairwell of the aging home, where firefighters found her body. She was a seventh-grader at Mountain View Middle School. Loftin said the rental home had no smoke detectors.

Firefighters classified the fire as suspicious because flames ripped through the house so quickly.

Firefighters were alerted at 4:19 a.m. and got to the house within seven minutes and quickly called for help from the Bremerton Fire Department. The home was already engulfed by flames.

"There was fire coming out of all the windows of the house, both the front and the rear," said Lt. Gary Nugent. "That is what raises suspicion. That is an awful lot of fire, awful quick."

Loftin said Lincoln, who is unemployed, moved to the house about a month ago, leaving another home that had electrical problems.

"She had nowhere else to go," Loftin said. Lincoln, 39, had just found an apartment, and her mother had offered to lend her deposit money so she could move in, Loftin said.