BC

A nine-year-old Vancouver Island girl has been severely injured in an early morning house fire in the Victoria-area community of View Royal.

Firefighters pulled the unresponsive youngster to safety as flames tore through the home, about eight kilometres west of downtown Victoria, Thursday morning.

Fire chief Paul Hurst says when crews arrived at about 3:30 a.m., a woman, believed to be the girl's mother, was already unconscious on the front doorstep, while a second woman was in the basement, screaming about the trapped girl.

Hurst says somehow the child managed to make it from her basement bedroom to the front hallway, where she was found.

He says it's fortunate she made it that far because the basement was completely engulfed and the first crews at the scene said temperatures were hitting 700 degrees Celsius.

The girl has been airlifted to B.C. Children's Hospital in Vancouver while the two women are being treated in Victoria hospitals.