Hull house fire: Man and 10-year-old daughter killed in blaze

Investigators try to find out what caused tragedy just before 8am

A 10-year-old girl and her father have been killed in a house fire in Hull.

Emergency services were called to reports of a blaze at around 7.50am on Saturday.

Humberside firefighters with three fire engines rushed to try to rescue the occupants from the house, in Wensley Avenue, Cottingham, and put out the flames.

But the man was pronounced dead at the scene, and his daughter died after being rushed to hospital.

Police cordoned off the area, while forensics specialists tried to establish what sparked the fire.

In a statement, Humberside Police said: “There will be a scene guard in place today as emergency services continue to work together to establish the cause of the fire.”

Initially police had said the girl was eight, but fire chiefs later corrected her age, and said the man was her father.

A spokesman for the Humberside Fire and Rescue Service said: “We pulled out an adult male, and what we now know is his 10-year-old daughter, and tragically both lives were lost to the fire.

“We’re working with police colleagues on the scene. We have got fire investigation officers there who will be working tirelessly throughout today.”

The father and daughter were the only two people in the property at the time, he said.

Local resident Carl Goodfellow told the Hull Daily Mail he had tried to alert the occupants of the house to the blaze, banging on the door and shouting through the letterbox.

He said: “It’s devastating - you just don’t expect this sort of thing.”

Additional reporting by PA