Six people were injured in a fire that caused extensive damage to one side of a brick duplex in New Kensington early Sunday morning.

New Kensington fire Chief Ed Saliba said a husband and wife and their three young children, who were sleeping when the fire started, escaped out of a second-story window and onto the roof of the front porch at 495 McCargo St. The building is at the corner of McCargo and the 200 block of Freeport Road.

Before the fire broke through the front door, the father jumped to the ground and the mother dropped the children to him. She jumped and broke her leg in the fall, Saliba said.

Because of the heavy fire, the family could not descend the staircase to reach the front door, the chief said.

A teenage boy sleeping in the basement was able to escape on his own, said Saliba, who did not know the name of the family.

The children were taken to UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh with the mother transported to another hospital, Saliba said.

“It was burning out the front door. Everything inside was disintegrated,” Saliba said of the destruction on the first floor of the residence on the McCargo side.

New Kensington firefighters were assisted by units from Arnold, Lower Burrell, Plum and Tarentum, Saliba said.

Three people living in the residence at 265 Freeport Road escaped on their own, but a woman at that residence was taken to a hospital for breathing treatments, Saliba said. The duplex is owned by Christina Vivola, who resides at the house.

One firefighter from Lower Burrell received scratches to his hand from a pet bird he rescued from the second floor of the McCargo Street residence, Saliba said.

Neighbors said they heard people screaming, and there were initial reports of entrapment, Saliba said.

State police fire marshal Adam Derco was investigating the cause of the fire.

The fire appears to have started on the first floor of the McCargo side of the buiding, Saliba said.

The fire had extended to the second floor when New Kensington firefighters arrived, eight minutes after receiving the alarm at 7:58 a.m., Saliba said. The fire spread from the McCargo side to the third floor on the Freeport Road side, damaging that section of the house.

It took firefighters about 45 minutes to bring the fire under control, Saliba said.

“It was very touch-and-go at first,” Saliba said.

The fire was so intense that it melted aluminum windows, Saliba said, adding the heat from the fire may have exceeded 1,000 degrees.

Ammunition for guns was exploding when firefighters were at the scene, but no one was hurt, Saliba said.

Issac Lozito, a Freeport Road resident living near the fire, said he saw the porch on fire and smoke was blowing out of the second floor of the McCargo side of the structure.

“We heard screaming and yelling,” Lozito said.

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