Three people killed in Oakland fire

(12-30) 11:02 PST Oakland -- Three people - including a 3-year-old girl - died after a fire in East Oakland early this morning gutted a two-story apartment.

Just before 2 a.m., Oakland firefighters found a second-story apartment near 82nd Avenue and Birch Street fully engulfed in flame, said Barry Donelan, an arson investigator with the Oakland Police Department.

Five people were taken to Highland Hospital. A man, a 27-year-old woman and a 3-year-old girl, died at the hospital, he said.

Investigators think the man who died had returned to the four-unit building to rescue a 7-year-old girl. She was unharmed, Donelan said.

The accidental fire may have been the result of an overloaded electrical circuit, Donelan said.

Power to the second-story apartment, which is bank-owned, was turned off December 2 but the residents had jury-rigged a system where they strung an extension cord through the window of a ground-floor apartment which had power up to theirs, Donelan said.

E-mail Will Kane at wkane@sfchronicle.com