4 children, 2 adults dead after Dixon house fire

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The Ogle County Sheriff’s Department says six people have died in a house fire in Dixon. | File photo

DIXON — Authorities say two adults and four children have died after an early-morning house fire in rural northern Illinois.

Ogle County Sheriff Brian VanVinkle says the victims of the Tuesday morning blaze are all members of one family. He says autopsies are planned and authorities didn’t immediately know the ages of the children.

VanVinkle says authorities don’t see anything suspicious about the fire and are investigating the cause along with state officials. The sheriff’s office says it received a 911 call from someone at the home just after midnight Tuesday reporting smoke in the basement.

VanVinkle says the roof of the home collapsed and there wasn’t much of the residence remaining after firefighters put out the blaze.

The sheriff’s department says police received a 911 call just after midnight Tuesday reporting smoke in the basement of a home outside Dixon. Sheriff’s officials say firefighters arrived to discover a “fully engulfed” residential structure fire.

The sheriff’s office, Illinois State Fire Marshal and Illinois State Police are investigating the cause of the fire.

The home is about 90 miles west of Chicago.

A firefighter says a house where six people were found dead was fully engulfed in flames when his crew arrived at the scene.

Captain Isaac Dimmig of the Dixon Rural Fire Department says there was no way that firefighters could enter the house when they arrived shortly after midnight on Tuesday because by that point the entire house was consumed by flames. He says nobody in the house outside Dixon survived the fire and that the bodies were not discovered until the fire was brought under control.

Dimmig would not say where the bodies were found in the home and says the cause of the fire remains under investigation. He says 10 fire departments responded to the blaze.

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