A devastating blaze that claimed the lives of an 19-year-old girl and both of her parents in Brampton Tuesday morning started on the main floor of the two-unit home.

The fire broke out at a residence on Madison Street, in the area of Dixie Road and Williams Parkway, shortly after 4 a.m.

Five fire trucks initially responded to the call and when crews arrived on scene, flames could be seen coming through a front window.

Brampton Fire Chief Michael Clark said it took firefighters approximately 10 minutes to get the blaze under control.

When crews were able to gain entry to the residence, they found three people dead inside bedrooms in the rear of the semi-detached back-split home.

Clark said prior to the arrival of first responders, an occupant of the basement apartment was able to rescue a young girl trapped on the main floor of the home.

Sheldon Teague told CTV News Toronto that he was in the basement when he smelled smoked and heard screams coming from the main floor unit.

“I looked up at the vent and saw there was smoke coming out. So I put on my shoes right away, went outside and I already noticed the flames and smoke coming out the top of the house,” he said Tuesday.

When he opened the door to the main floor, he said he couldn’t see anything through the smoke.

“It was burning my eyes. I had to run back outside and get my friends phone, turn on a flashlight and try to direct whoever I could to the front door,” Teague said.

He said more screams could be heard coming from the house and he eventually spotted the little girl in the hallway.

“I told her to crawl towards me. She said that she really couldn’t so I guess she was pretty badly hurt. So I just ran in through the smoke quickly, picked her up, put her outside.”

The child was transported to a Toronto hospital to be treated for third-degree burns and smoke inhalation.

Police have not yet released the age or gender of the victims or their relationship to one another but CP24 has confirmed that the three victims are 19-year-old Amina Kapadia and her two parents, Jyoti Kapadia and Iftikhar Niazi.

Kapadia’s nine-year-old sister Zoya remains at SickKids Hospital in serious condition with third degree burns.

Nicole Chevolleau, Amina's best friend, told CTV News Toronto that Amina wanted to become a doctor one day.

"She was really smart. She was really sweet and so was her mom, just really nice people. She was so talented," Chevolleau said. "She painted and she drew... She was really good at that stuff. She was doing it for as long as I can remember."

The Office of the Fire Marshal (OFM), Peel Regional Police and a fire investigator with Brampton Fire and Emergency Services will be working to determine the cause of the deadly blaze.

However, investigators have determined that the fire started on the main floor living room of the residence.

Richard Derstroff, a fire investigations supervisor with the OFM, told reporters at the scene Tuesday afternoon that the building had been converted into a multi-level structure with two separate units. He said four residents lived in the upstairs unit and three others lived downstairs.

Derstroff said two of the victims have since been removed from the home and crews are working to remove the third.

“Unfortunately, I see it too many times. It’s tragedies like this that hopefully people wake up and realize the importance of having smoke alarms and making sure they have a fire safety plan for their family, especially in the winter,” he said.

Investigators could not speak to whether the home had working smoke alarms installed.

“Nevertheless this should be a reminder to everyone the need to have working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms,” Clark said.

“Fire spreads very rapidly and in this case, three people were trapped in the house.”

Clark called the deadly fire “tragic.”

“We have had other tragedies in the past, but certainly this is touching in the sense that we have lost three lives,” he said.