COLUMBUS — The new year is in only its fourth day, and already fires have killed nine people in Ohio in 2010.

Spokesman Shane Cartmill in the Ohio fire marshal’s office says the number is a concern. He says there were just two fire fatalities in the state during the first week of last year.

The latest death was early Monday. A 65-year-old woman was killed by a fire at a mobile home in Portsmouth in southern Ohio.

Lorain County has had a handful of fires but no fire deaths yet in 2010. Frank Sabol died in the last days of 2009 Wednesday in a fire at his West River Road home in Elyria.

The state’s deadliest fire so far in 2010 also was in a mobile home and killed two young children and their parents in the north-central Ohio community of Greenwich on Saturday.

Cartmill says all the fatal fires since New Year’s Day remain under investigation. He says there are few common threads, though in many of the cases there were no working smoke detectors.