New York – Screams poured from the burning building along with smoke and flames: “Help me! Help me! Please! Please!”
Bystanders looked up to see a woman toss her children out the window one at a time to those below.
The scene unfolded early Thursday during New York’s deadliest fire in nearly two decades – a blaze that killed eight children and one adult, part of an extended family led by African immigrants who shared a row house near Yankee Stadium.
The woman who tossed her children jumped from the building. Her fate and those of her children were not immediately known. Investigators believe the fire started overnight with a faulty space heater or overloaded power strip, ignited a mattress in the basement and quickly raced up the stairs of the four-story structure. Most of the 22 residents – 17 of them children – were stranded on the upper floors as the blaze raged out of control.
Neighbor Edward Soto ran toward the fire, then stared in disbelief as an infant was tossed from the building.
“All I see is just a big cloud of white dust, and out of nowhere comes the first baby,” said Soto, who caught the child while with another neighbor. Moments later, he caught a second child. At least one of the children was not breathing.
Firefighters worked for two hours in freezing predawn temperatures to bring the flames under control. The home had two smoke alarms, but neither had batteries. Police said there was no evidence of a crime.
The dead were found throughout the house, mostly on the upper floors, with babies still in their cribs. The victims included five children from one family, along with a wife and three other children from a second family.
Word of the fire spread grief across two continents, from the Bronx to villages in Mali, a West African country about twice the size of Texas and one of the poorest nations in the world.
There were reports of 19 injuries, including four firefighters and an emergency medical worker.
