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Five members of one family, including three young grandchildren, died in an early-morning house fire in Abingdon, Maryland, on Jan. 18, 2007, in what fire officials described as Harford County's deadliest blaze in years.

The dead were Jerome R. Shropshire Sr., 72, a retired steelworker, and his wife, Annette, who was in her 60s, according to fire officials and family records. The couple were caring for their grandchildren while their daughter worked at a nearby supermarket and took college classes. The three children, listed in the family's obituary as Donald Terrence White, Derrick Dana White and 8-month-old Jhaniyah Imani Davis, also died.

The fire spread quickly through the century-old wood-frame house in the 3400 block of Philadelphia Road. Harford County sheriff's deputies reached the home before fire crews and pulled Jerome Shropshire from the back of the building, authorities said. He was taken to Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air, where he was pronounced dead. The other four victims were found on the second floor, one in a hallway and the rest in bedrooms.

A next-door neighbor, Richard Lentini, was among those who called 911. "Sparks were flying into my driveway," Lentini told the Baltimore Sun. "The whole side of his house, even the fence were in flames."

The county communications center logged 12 calls about the fire, the first about eight seconds before 10:18 a.m., according to county officials. All 12 came from cell phones, which prevented dispatchers from pulling an address automatically the way they can with a landline. Callers placed the fire at several spots, including the intersection of Route 7 and Abingdon Road and "right down below" a nearby funeral home, before a bystander supplied the correct block. Officials said the confusion changed the order in which units were assigned but delayed them by only seconds. The first engine able to put water on the fire arrived at 10:25 a.m. from the Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company, after the Abingdon company's engine was held up because its qualified operator had taken another truck out for maintenance.

Richard Gardiner, a county spokesman, said a professional department could not have changed the outcome. "There was nothing a paid firefighter could have done to save a life in this home," he said, adding that smoke and heat had likely turned deadly before flames were visible from outside.

Investigators found no evidence of a working smoke detector in the house, officials said. Deputy State Fire Marshal W. Faron Taylor said one alarm was recovered from the ruins still in its original box. The cause of the fire was undetermined.