Jacksonville, Florida: Man Found Dead Inside West 17th Street House Fire Near Grand Park

Jacksonville firefighters found a man dead inside a house on West 17th Street on Monday evening after a fire broke out in the room where he was found, according to the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department.

Crews were sent to the home near the Grand Park neighborhood just after 5 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 2. Engine 7 arrived at 5:03 p.m. and found fire showing on the outside of the house. Firefighters began an aggressive attack on the flames while a Ladder 7 crew searched inside.

Found in the room where the fire started

During that search, crews found an adult man who had died in the room where the fire appears to have started. The department declared the fire under control at 5:12 p.m., about nine minutes after the first engine arrived.

The man's name has not been released. No other injuries were reported in the local accounts of the fire.

State Fire Marshal investigating

The State Fire Marshal's Office is investigating what caused the fire, the department said. JFRD Director and Fire Chief Percy Golden II addressed the response in the department's account carried by News4JAX, which reported the timeline of the call, the search and the discovery inside the home. Action News Jax also reported that firefighters found the man dead inside the home after the fire on West 17th Street.

House fires that turn fatal often move faster than the response to them. In this case the first engine was on scene three minutes after dispatch and the fire was under control nine minutes after that, and the man inside still did not survive. Investigators have not said whether the home had working smoke alarms, and they have not announced any sign of foul play.

For the Grand Park area, the open questions now sit with the Fire Marshal: what started the fire in that room, and whether anything about the house made escape harder. The department has not said when the investigation will finish.

Both Jacksonville stations carried the same account from the Fire and Rescue Department: a Monday evening call on West 17th Street, a fast arrival, a search that found the man inside, and a fire knocked down in minutes. The reports did not give the man's age, did not say whether anyone else lived in the house, and did not describe damage to neighboring homes. Those details, along with the cause, now rest with the State Fire Marshal's investigators, whose findings will decide whether this was an accident inside one room or something the police need to examine as well.