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House fire in Bronx kills 9, including 8 children

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 9, 2007

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 two children out the window one at a time to those below.

The scene unfolded early Thursday during 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 children tossed from the three-story building survived, authorities said. The woman who threw them jumped but survived.

The fire was sparked by an overheated space heater near a mattress in a basement bedroom, then raced up a stairway pushed by air from broken back windows, said fire Chief Salvatore Cassano. Most of the 22 residents - 17 of them children - were stranded on the upper floors as the blaze raged.

"I can't recollect a fire where we lost eight children," Cassano said.

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.

Firefighters worked for two hours in freezing predawn temperatures to bring the flames under control. 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.

Word of the fire spread grief across two continents, from the Bronx to villages in Mali, a West African country.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," said a devastated Mamadou Soumare, a livery cabdriver whose wife, son and 7-month-old twins died in the blaze. "I love her. I love my wife."

Soumare was driving through Harlem when he received a frantic cell phone call from his wife, Fatoumata.

Soumare rushed home in his cab, only to helplessly watch as their home turned into a tomb.

Moussa Magassa, an official of the New York chapter of the High Council for Malians Living Abroad, was headed back to the city from a business trip to Mali after receiving the grim news that nearly half of his 11 children were dead, said council representative Bourema Niambele.

[Last modified March 9, 2007, 02:14:24]