A devastating house fire in Charles County has claimed the lives of six people, including four children, marking Maryland’s deadliest residential fire in more than a decade.

A wall of flames. Anesha Berry says she had just awakened to get ready for church on Sunday when she saw the house on fire two doors down. “When I looked out the window, I saw the flames,” Anesha recalled,

The victims were two adults and four children, according to officials. There were nine residents who lived at the house; one adult escaped and two others were not home at the time of the fire. The origin of the fire remains under investigation, but there was no evidence of a criminal act, the Maryland State Fire Marshal said in a post on X.