READING, Pa. (WPVI) -- A family in pain is trying to come to grips with the fact that during a joyous holiday season they must make plans to bury a mother and father.
Retired factory worker 87-year-old Pedro Morales and his wife 88-year-old Miriam Vega perished in a 3 alarm fire that ripped through their Spruce Street home in Reading Sunday night.
Neighbor Anna Delacruz heard screams for help from the couple's daughter who looked after the elderly pair.
Delacruz says, "She was saying, 'My mother, my father. They are suffocating. Help me."
Delacruz says Firefighters responded quickly but the blaze was intense.
Family members said a son and daughter of the couple tried to enter the burning building but were stopped.
Maria Bultron, the victims' granddaughter, tells us, "My aunt and uncle (tried to run in), but firefighters wouldn't let them. The smoke was too much."
Family members say both victims had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Their bodies found in the front the first floor bedroom used by the couple.
One unusual aspect the family says a son had been called to the house Sunday morning after his sister had smelled smoke.
The victims' daughter, Carmen Morales, explains, "My sister had called at 10:25 to my brother saying that she was smelling, like, smoke - like, fire. And he came over and checked but he didn't find nothing wrong."
That call was about 10 hours before the fatal fire.
The Fire Marshal's office is conducting an investigation into the origin and cause of the blaze.