NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- A North Las Vegas woman killed in a fire Wednesday morning couldn’t open her safety shutters or her front door before she perished, fire officials told FOX5.

Those same shutters also temporarily delayed firefighters as they tried to find her home, because smoke and flames were trapped inside.

“So they could kind of smell it and kind of see it, but couldn’t find it,” said North Las Vegas Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Brame, who said crews found the home completely sealed, with smoke only coming from the chimney.

Firefighters kicked down the door to find the victim in her wheelchair at the front door. A cat was also killed in the fire.

“Essentially without shutters in a normal home, the windows would have been broken,” Brame said. “Obviously flames and smoke would have been visible.”

There is a mechanism to raise the shutters, officials said, but the woman didn’t reach it in time.

Her name hasn’t been released and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.