NEAR ALTON - Fire marshal investigators are asking for any information that can help them piece together what happened in a fatal fire near Alton.

CHANNEL 5 NEWS spoke to Fire Investigator, John Franz, about the ongoing investigation.

“Right now not looking at it like its arson; it does not look like it was an intentional fire. There was a lot of debris.  There were heavy fire loads in that area,” says Franz.

Tuesday afternoon, Fire Marshall Investigators also addressed questions about how they responded to the fire.

 They say they got to the scene within five minutes, responding to a county area outside of city limits.

“By the time they got there the flames were already too intense to go into one of the houses… so unfortunately I did have to make to the decision, which is a very hard decision to make to pull back," says Lieutenant Armando Espinoza.

The fire department also said that security bars on the windows of the home also made  it harder for them to get in.

For more information watch the video above.