BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) – A mother and three children were killed and their father critically injured when fire swept through a three-family home on the city’s west side early Monday, fire officials said.

Bruce Collins, the city’s fire marshal, said investigators did not find any evidence of smoke detectors in the second-floor apartment where that family lived. There were also bars bolted to many of the windows in the apartment, he said.

“You’re entrapping people, it’s like padlocking a door,” he said.

The woman and a 14-year-old boy were pronounced dead at the scene. An 11-year-old girl was pronounced dead at Bridgeport Hospital. A 3-year-old girl was pronounced dead at St. Vincent’s Medical Center.

Neighbor Darlene Satterfield watched as firefighters took the boy out of the house.

“His arms were in a circle position. It looked like he was holding on to something,” she said.

Authorities did not identify those killed, but school officials identified two of the children as Anh Thach, a 14-year-old 7th-grader, and Trinh Thach, his 11-year-old sister who is in the 6th grade. Relatives identified the 3-year-old as Daisey Thach and the mother as Luong Thach.

A team of school psychologists was sent to Curiale School where the children attended.

Autopsies were scheduled for Tuesday.

The children’s father, 37-year-old Ring Thach, was in critical condition in the Bridgeport Hospital’s burn unit, officials said. After escaping the fire, he tried to go back into the house, witnesses said.

The family had come to the United States in 2001 from Vietnam, where the woman’s father had been an American soldier, relatives said.

Nine people were left homeless in the fire, said Kaufman.

The fire broke out at about 4:30 a.m. in or near a kitchen on the second floor of the house on Iranistan Ave., said Fire Chief Bruce Porzelt.

Jackie Gonzalez, who lived on the third floor, said she woke up, smelled something, and saw smoke pouring into her window.

She grabbed her two children and a niece and they made it out safely. She said she tumbled down the stairs through the black smoke clutching her 5-year-old daughter.

“I couldn’t see nothing, I threw myself to the stairs,” she said.

Porzelt called Gonzalez a heroine.

“She was smart enough under all that pressure – that’s like combat. She saved lives.”

The center of the building acted like a flue and the home was fully involved in flames by the time firefighters arrived on the scene, Porzelt said. They were able to rescue several residents, he said.

One firefighter was taken to St. Vincent’s suffering from heat exhaustion, Porzelt said.

The fire gutted the second and third floors of the wood-frame house, and took two hours to bring under control.

Arson investigators and police were on the scene Monday morning in an attempt to determine the cause of the fire.

Collins, the fire marshal, said it appeared the fire was accidental. He said investigators found evidence that smoke detectors had been installed in apartments on the first and third floors of the house. But, he said investigators did not find them in the apartment where the fire broke out.

An insurance adjuster said the owner told him that smoke detectors had been installed in all the apartments last year.