Despite the courageous effort of a passerby and quickly arriving firefighters, one man died after being extracted from his burning home in the northeast San Fernando Valley early Sunday morning.

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The Los Angeles Fire Department was summoned by a 9-1-1 caller at 3:31 AM on April 29, 2018, to respond to a structure fire at 12111 Rossiter Avenue in Sylmar, where firefighters arrived swiftly to find smoke and fire showing from a one story home.



An off-duty Los Angeles Police Officer had kicked open the home's front door prior to LAFD arrival, in a valiant attempt to enter the burning residence, but was precluded from doing so by intense heat.



The first of 33 firefighters under the command of Battalion Chief Nicholas Ferrari, extended hoseliness in a vigorous interior attack on the flames, while their colleagues concurrently searched the 1,372 square-foot, four-bedroom home to discover an unresponsive male in a bedroom. Carried to an awaiting team of LAFD Firefighter/Paramedics, the unconscious and non-breathing man was provided advanced life support measures during light-and-siren ambulance transport to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.



No other injuries were reported. The flames were confined within the structure of fire origin, and extinguished in just twenty minutes.



There was no immediate evidence of functional smoke alarms within the home. The residence, built in 1963, was not equipped with optional fire sprinklers. There were no security bars on the doors or windows, or other obvious factors to impair occupant egress.



A positive identification of the dead man, as well as the precise cause, time and manner of his death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.



Fire loss to the structure and its contents is still being tabulated. The cause of the blaze remains under active investigation by Los Angeles Fire Department Investigators.





Dispatched Units: RA91 E275 T75 RA875 E298 E98 T98 E7 BC12 E91 RA75 EM15 AR2 PH1 AR21 E98 E91 PI1