Originally Posted by jen:
Obviously this is just speculation, but I wonder if the kids were in the basement and the stairs were cut off by the fire in the kitchen. In my inlaws house it would be tough to get downstairs in the event of a kitchen fire...
We have a side door on our house which is the easiest to access the basement through...however our kitchen is directly beside this door as well. In the case of a kitchen fire in my home (if it were out of control and I could not get my kids out the side door) we would have to go through one of the basement windows. Luckily our basement windows open so this is an option.