Two children dead, several others hospitalized after fire in Staten Island home

Two children in Staten Island have died and several more been injured after a house fire was reported to the New York Fire Department. 

The Twitter account for the FDNY said a fire at 1048 Van Duzer St. in Staten Island's Fox Hill neighborhood was reported at 10:18 a.m. on Dec. 23. When firefighters arrived, they were told there were multiple people trapped on the second floor of the three-story home. 

It's unclear where the fire started or what led to the blaze, but FDNY chief of fire operations Jack Hodgins said in a news conference that "the entire second floor was engulfed in flames, so much so that the fire was coming down the stairs," a condition that he described as "very rare."