basement of a more
than 100-year-old
wooden building
where 22 people from
immigrant families
lived, the
authorities said.
The fire killed five young brothers from one family and three children — a boy and twin babies — and their mother from another. The flames were propelled through the house as much by tragic errors — including a possibly delayed call to 911 and inoperable smoke alarms — as by the combustible wooden stairs that fed its rapid rise to the people above, the authorities said.
“You could see the flames shooting out the door,” said Simone Simon, 28, a Salvation Army volunteer who arrived when the fire was at its peak.
Another witness, Troy Erwin, 44, said, “It was an inferno — smoke everywhere.”
In a news conference in Manhattan this morning, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the fire, which began at about 11:20 p.m., appeared to have been caused by a space heater or an overloaded power strip in a basement bedroom. When the woman in the basement saw the fire, she ran upstairs for help, leaving the door open behind her, and inadvertently allowed the flames to spread quickly, the fire department said.
Relatives said three families lived at the building on 1022 Woodycrest Avenue.
The residents may have delayed in calling the Fire Department as they tried to put out the flames themselves, the mayor said.
“It may have been, we’re not sure yet, but it may have been that the residents tried to put the fire out themselves,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “Once they called the Fire Department, the Fire Department was on site in just over three minutes. But sadly, that was not enough time to prevent this tragedy. The fire started to go up the stairs and people upstairs could not get out.”
The eight children who died ranged in age from infants to 11 years old. The woman who died, Fatoumata Soumare, 45, was the mother of three of the dead children, Djibril Soumare, age 3, and 7-month-old twins, Sisi and Harouma, the children’s father said. Their fourth child survived, a 7-year-old girl named Hassimy.
The police identified the five other children, all brothers, as Diaba Magassa, 3; Mahamadou Magassa, 7; Bilaly Magassa, 1; Bandiogou Magassa, 11; and Aboukary Magassa, 6. Their father, Moussa Magassa, a former carpenter for the school system, was on vacation in Africa and was expected back in New York tonight. City property records showed that he owned the house.
The mayor said the death toll had a good chance of rising, but hospital officials said this afternoon that the injured children’s conditions were improving and stabilizing.
“The fallout from that fire really is heartbreaking,” the mayor said. “It’s obviously terrible for anyone to perish like this. Sometimes it just seems more painful and more unfair when it’s children that die. When children die, everyone around them, everyone who loved them, die a little bit as well.”
He said that in addition to the dead, between 17 and 19 people had been injured, including some minor injuries to firefighters and one emergency service supervisor.
“Using stoves, using space heaters, these are dangerous ways to heat a house,” the mayor said. “The central heating was working. It is still working. The Fire Department checked it this morning. It wasn’t a case where there was not heat.”
“There were two smoke detectors,” he said. “Unfortunately, neither had batteries in them.”
The mayor said fire officials regularly stress that anyone finding flames in a room should shut the door behind them. Chief Fire Marshal Louis Garcia described the grim efficiency of the blaze. “You simply had a fire that spread up the staircase,” he said. “The door to her bedroom was on the staircase. She left the door open. It spread up the staircase. The damaging factor was the fact that it went up the staircase. It’s a combustible building. The staircase was wooden. It’s combustible. There’s paint there, and that spread the fire.”
ran into the house
and did their job.”