Three girls escape Fox Lake house fire

Three children were safely removed from a burning house Friday morning in Fox Lake, thanks to a sharp-eyed firefighter.

Battalion Chief Ed Lescher said he spotted the fire on the 300 block of Mastodon Drive as he was pulling up to a nearby fire station.

Lescher said he saw smoke rising behind the house, went to investigate and saw fire from a shed spreading to the two-story house.

"(I was) very surprised, because nobody had called it in yet," he said.

Lescher reported the blaze and then, with help from a local police officer, knocked on the house's doors until two young girls answered.

They didn't know the house was on fire and said an older sister still was asleep upstairs, Lescher said.

"(We) woke up the older sister and got her out of the house," he said.

Firefighters had the blaze under control within 30 minutes, Lescher said. Crews from the Greater Round Lake Fire Protection District assisted on the scene.

The house was badly damaged and was deemed uninhabitable, Lescher said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.