The Missouri State Fire Marshal's Office has concluded it is impossible to determine the cause of a condominium fire in which four children died.
In a press release from the Osage Beach Fire Protection District sent out Thursday morning, Fire Chief Jeff Dorhauer said an investigator from the state fire marshal's office had concluded the damage from the fire was too heavy to make a final determination as to what initially started the blaze.
"The area of origin appears to have been just outside the door of the unit where the four children lost their lives," Dorhauer said. "This area of the structure sustained so much damage that evidence needed to positively identify the cause has been destroyed. Without this concrete evidence the cause will remain undetermined."
The children were pronounced dead at Lake Regional Hospital around midnight Tuesday, following the fire which virtually destroyed a four story building at the Compass Pointe Condominium complex situated along the Lake of the Ozarks shoreline just off Passover Road in Osage Beach.
The children were all in one room of a fourth floor condo unit when the blaze broke out.
Although the names of the children who perished in the blaze were initially withheld from the media they have now been identified as 2-year-old Keri Helton, 2-year-old Zeza Bradshaw, 4-year-old Lee Ann Hendrickson and 5-year-old Joshua Hendrickson.
The children, all cousins, were staying overnight at the condo as part of a birthday celebration. The father of one of the children was home at the time of the blaze, however the fire was so intense by the time it was discovered he was unable to enter the room where the children were sleeping, Dorhauer said.
According to information provided by Dorhauer at a Wednesday morning press conference, although the intensity of the blaze forced the father to leave the condo unit, he made a second attempt to reach the children but was unsuccessful. Dorhauer said, in fact, the blaze was so intense that even the firefighters were unable to reach the children until the "fire had been knocked down some."
Although at least one of the children resided at the condominium on a fulltime basis, the others were visiting. The mother of the child who lived there was at work at the time of the fire, according to Osage Beach Police Chief Todd Davis. Davis said all of the children were full-time residents of the Lake Area.
Dorhauer said the exact cause of the children's death was unknown, autopsies had been scheduled for late Wednesday. However, he went on to say he did not know when the results of those autopsies would be made public.