Thread: NYC Fire In Immigrant Housing Kills at Least 5

Arson Eyed in New York City Fire That Killed 5

Updated: 6 hours 59 minutes ago
Verena Dobnik

AP
NEW YORK (Jan. 31) - A suspicious fire tore through a building that housed Guatemalan immigrants, gnawing gaping holes in the structure's backside, partially collapsing the roof and killing at least five people Saturday.

The early morning blaze at the Brooklyn building is being investigated as a possible case of arson because it started behind the door of the first-floor entrance to the building, New York City Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said.

"That's not where a fire would normally start," Cassano said after surveying the devastation of the fire, which trapped residents and caused the interior walls to collapse. "That's why this is a fire that we are saying is very likely to be incendiary."

Julie Jacobson, AP

Police block an intersection while investigators search for evidence of arson in a Brooklyn building where five people died in a fire Saturday.
Four people in the building were injured, including an infant and a child who were tossed out the window by a woman frantically trying to save them. The infant was in critical condition with a fractured skull after bystanders below failed to catch him, officials and witnesses said. The other child landed on an awning.

At least one adult was hospitalized, and 13 firefighters were injured, none of them seriously, officials said.

The fire started at about 2:30 a.m. and flames quickly engulfed the three-story building on a busy commercial strip, consuming a ground-floor Japanese restaurant and two apartments on the upper floors. The stairwell between the floors collapsed, as well as part of the roof, trapping residents, according to fire officials.

As the fire raged, a woman held a baby boy out a third-floor window. Bars covered the lower half of the window, keeping the woman from climbing out, neighbor Juan Gabriel told The New York Times.

"She was screaming, 'Help me, help me,' " Gabriel said. Moments later, she threw the infant out the window to Gabriel and two other men.

In the darkness, the child fell to the ground, authorities said. She then tossed another child out the window. He landed on the awning below.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the woman survived the fire.

The fire was the deadliest in the city since March 2007, when 10 people from two Malian immigrant families, including nine children, were killed in the Bronx. Seventy-three people died in fires in 2009, the fewest number of fatalities recorded in more than 90 years.

Hours after the fire, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood near the rumble of an elevated subway, residents said they were shocked by the carnage and destruction.

Alex Lazaro, a Mexican man who works as a union organizer and lives in the neighborhood, said that the people who lived in the building were poor immigrants.

"They live very humbly and don't make enough to live in a better place," Lazaro said, standing on a sidewalk looking at the burned-out shell of the building, which was cordoned off.

Most of the building's residents were from Guatemala, Gabriel said.

For decades, the neighborhood was traditionally home to Italians and Jews, but in recent years immigrants from Russia, China and Latin America have moved in, residents said.

Hazel Deleon, who until recently worked at a health food store several doors from the building, said she was walking by this morning and stopped and "freaked out."

A lifelong resident of the neighborhood, she said immigrants in the building were packed together into the apartments.

"I would see them looking out the windows when I passed by," she said.

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/a ... 5/19338863

It sounds like an episode of Law and Order where they wanted to get rid of tenants as the property was in the process of being sold.

B'klyn blaze kills 5
Mom dies saving kids in 'suspicious' inferno

By LORENA MONGELLI, BRANDON GUARNERI and JOHN DOYLE

Last Updated: 8:30 AM, February 1, 2010

Posted: 3:51 AM, January 31, 2010
Screaming parents desperately tossed their children from the windows of a burning Brooklyn apartment building yesterday morning during a horrific blaze that killed five people and that investigators suspect was an arson. The raging inferno appeared to have started just inside the front door of 2033 86th St. in Bensonhurst at around 2:30 a.m. Flames spread quickly up the stairs, trapping residents inside two crowded apartments, officials said. As many as 20 Guatemalan immigrants lived on the two floors. While many were able to escape down the building's rear fire escape, several were left hanging out the front windows, panicked and screaming for help as the smoke and flames tore through the roof.

DYING WOMAN'S HEARTBREAKING PLEA TO HUSBAND Neighbor Jorge Morales, 39, ran out and spotted Luisa Ordoñez, 33, and husband Miguel
Screaming parents desperately tossed their children from the windows of a burning Brooklyn apartment building yesterday morning during a horrific blaze that killed five people and that investigators suspect was an arson.

The raging inferno appeared to have started just inside the front door of 2033 86th St. in Bensonhurst at around 2:30 a.m. Flames spread quickly up the stairs, trapping residents inside two crowded apartments, officials said.

As many as 20 Guatemalan immigrants lived on the two floors. While many were able to escape down the building's rear fire escape, several were left hanging out the front windows, panicked and screaming for help as the smoke and flames tore through the roof.

DYING WOMAN'S HEARTBREAKING PLEA TO HUSBAND

Neighbor Jorge Morales, 39, ran out and spotted Luisa Ordoñez, 33, and husband Miguel Chan, 40, hanging from a third-story window with their children -- 2-month-old Maria Maura, and a 2-year-old boy, Josias -- in their arms.

"I heard Luisa scream, 'I'm going to throw my baby,' " he said. "I tried to catch the baby, but she came down with so much force she went through my hands and hit the ground. We didn't have a chance. Everything happened so quickly. There was no time to think."

The infant suffered a fractured skull in the fall, but is expected to live. Her heroic mother was among those who perished.

Chan then tried to toss Josias to a neighbor hanging out of a second-story window, but the child landed on the awning. Firefighters arriving at the scene were able to pull Chan, the neighbor and the little boy down to safety.

Manuel Alvarez, 32, who lived in the back bedroom on the second floor, said the apartment had been divided into two bedrooms -- each for three people -- and his was cut off from the fire escape.

"We couldn't go out the door because there was just too much smoke," he said. "I had no time to put anything on, I just ran out. I escaped out the back window. Someone found a ladder and put it next to the window and I was able to run down. Thank God I am alive."

At first, firefighters were pushed back by the intensity of the three-alarm blaze, which ultimately caused the second floor to collapse into the restaurant below, officials said.

"The fire spread up through the staircase and right up through the roof," Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said. "It's a very unusual place for a fire to start. It's very likely to be incendiary. If the fire was started intentionally, it would be likely whoever did it was trying to kill."

Once firefighters were able to enter, they found four bodies on the third floor and one in the rubble of what had been the second floor. While firefighters believe everybody was accounted for last night, they plan on searching through the rubble today.

In addition to Ordoñez, neighbors identified Juan Boreno, a construction worker from Guatemala and a father of six, as one of the dead.

Officials said that 13 firefighters were hospitalized, including one who fell through the floor into the basement. It was not immediately clear if the building had been illegally subdivided, but records show the building had been cited for an illegal conversion in 2008.

That problem had been resolved in January 2009. The landlord could not be reached.

lorena.mongelli@nypost.com

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/broo ... z0eIc9Ge24

I would not be surprised if they illegally subdivided the property. There is alot of it out there. Now that alot of those property owners had their properties foreclosed on and it is very hard to sell those homes due to all the work done without permits. code enforcement and building and planning are have a nightmare on their hands.

Related: http://www.alipac.us/f12/two-years-l...5/#post1256548