An early-morning fire on Sunday claimed the lives of five children at a day care center in Erie, Pa., that the city’s fire chief said had only one smoke detector — in the attic — and had overloaded extension cords running beneath a couch.

The chief, Guy Santone, said the victims ranged in age from 9 months to 14 years old and were sleeping upstairs in the two-story house when the fire was reported at 1:15 a.m.

The authorities did not release the names of the children who died but said four of them were siblings.

Chief Santone said the blaze took an emotional toll on firefighters.

“We’ve had our fire deaths, but nothing like this,” he said. “It’s heart-wrenching.”

Two boys jumped out of a second-floor window and sustained minor injuries. The day care center’s owner, Elaine Harris, escaped by running through the flames, Chief Santone said.

Ms. Harris suffered burns to her throat and tried to drive herself to the hospital but got into a car crash, he said. She was taken by helicopter to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Mercy.

Ms. Harris’s condition was not immediately available on Sunday evening. One of the victims was her child, the chief said.

The other four victims had been in the house under the care of the day care center, he said. Officials were exploring whether their parents had been working overnight and had dropped off the children at the center.

Danika Scott, 32, who lives next door to the center, said she was sitting near a window and reading around 1 a.m. when she saw the bright orange glow of flames outside. She called 911.

Then she heard a piercing scream. She rushed outside.

The two boys — Ms. Harris’s 12- and 17-year-old sons — survived by leaping from the second floor.

“We were screaming at the kids to jump down,” Ms. Scott said. “They were really scared.”

The 12-year-old boy was covered in soot, Ms. Scott said. The windows started blowing out.

“It sounded like four mini-explosions,” she said.

Chief Santone, who was previously the city’s fire inspector, said that fire safety officials regularly check for smoke detectors at day care centers but that he could not recall visiting this one before. The chief said it was hard to tell if the detector in the attic had been working but that he “highly doubted it.”

“They’re supposed to have the correct number of smoke detectors, which they did not,” he said.

Every bedroom should have a smoke detector, as well as the hallway outside the bedrooms, the first floor, the basement and the attic, Chief Santone said. Erie County property records show that the house had five bedrooms.

The chief said that investigators were looking at an electrical malfunction as the possible cause of the fire and that fans, lights and chargers had been plugged into several extension cords running under a couch.

An electrical engineer is expected to check the house as early as Monday, he said.

The day care center had its certificate of compliance renewed by the state on March 21, according to a state database. The certificate is valid for one year.

The tragedy on Sunday was reminiscent of a fatal electrical fire on Jan. 10, 1987, that claimed the lives of five children, ages 2 to 11, in a single-family home just two miles away, according to The Erie Times-News.

Kathy Dahlkemper, the Erie County executive, said grief counselors were being brought in for the emergency dispatchers who answered the fire calls.

Erie, a city of about 100,000 residents, is on the south shore of Lake Erie in northwestern Pennsylvania, about 90 miles southwest of Buffalo.

Ms. Scott, the neighbor, said she was devastated when she learned the children had died.

“I just lost it,” she said.

Ms. Scott said firefighters allowed her back into her home around 6 a.m. Part of the side of her house had melted, she said.

Soon, a memorial began forming near a telephone pole in front of the day care center.

“There are star balloons, princess balloons, stuffed bears,” she said. “There’s flowers. There’s a Nerf football.”

Neil Vigdor is a breaking news reporter on the Express Desk. He previously covered Connecticut politics for the Hartford Courant. @gettinviggy • Facebook

Mihir Zaveri covers breaking news from New York. Before joining The Times in 2018 he was a reporter for The Houston Chronicle.

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