‘IT’S A VERY BIG TRAGEDY’
Dad, 2 young kids killed in 2-alarm blaze
SPRINGFIELD — A brave father died with his two young children when he rushed back into a burning apartment for them after first getting his pregnant wife and toddler out, while other residents dropped a baby to safety out a window, authorities and witnesses said.
“He died for them,” Imam Wissam Abdul Baki of the Islamic Society of Western Massachusetts said of the Somalian father, who died with two of his young children on the second floor of a four-story, 20-unit brick residence at 49 Belmont Ave. in the early morning blaze yesterday.
With tears streaming down her face, neighbor Keisha Lewis, 31, a mother of four, described seeing a baby dropped through the smoke into the arms of a man on the ground.
“I heard people screaming, ‘They threw a baby out the window!’” Lewis said. “We went inside to get the baby a blanket to wrap him in until police arrived. He seemed OK. There were a bunch of people running out of the house. When they put the baby on the stretcher, his eyes were open.”
Authorities said other residents — possibly including another pregnant woman — jumped from windows into an evergreen bush that broke their fall.
Springfield Fire Department spokesman Dennis Leger said it remained unclear to authorities last night whether there was one pregnant woman who escaped or two. In addition to the three fatalities he said at least four other people were injured — a pregnant woman, an adult male and a child. He said the fourth person was a woman who complained of chest pains.
Abdul Baki said he believes the pregnant Somali mother was shepherded out a door by her husband before he went back in for the kids.
“It’s a very big tragedy. There are issues we have no control over, and that’s when God stands in for us,” the imam said after praying at the scene of the fatal fire and then attending a law enforcement debriefing of the widow at the South End Citizens Council.
The widow and her daughter were then taken by ambulance to an area hospital to be evaluated.
“She’s been through a traumatic experience, but she was strong. She was very helpful with the investigation,” said Mayor Domenic Sarno, burying his face in his hands. “She said her husband told her to get out and then apparently he went back in.”
Sarno opted not to march in the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade yesterday, instead helping the American Red Cross settle a dozen families displaced by the twoalarm blaze.
“No matter how much power or authority a mayor has, these are the worst times,” Sarno said. “I can’t bring anybody back to life.”
A man who raced panic-stricken to the scene trying to find out where the bodies had been taken identified himself to police as the adult victim’s brother and the children’s uncle. He told the Herald his brother was in his 40s.
“The children are very young,” he said.
Springfield fire Commissioner Bernard “B.J.” Calvi said the fire department was summoned at 7:20 a.m. by the building’s master alarm.
“Companies were on scene within three to four minutes,” he said. “They had heavy fire showing upon arrival. People were jumping from the windows.”
He said an arson investigation was initiated, although the fire is not considered suspicious.
Lois Sands, 57, said she and her boyfriend were awakened by the fire alarms in his fourth-floor apartment.
“It was terrifying,” Sands said. “He went to open up the door and, I mean, you couldn’t see the floor to go down the stairs — nothing but black, thick smoke ... I was praying I wouldn’t topple over the bannister and break my neck. I could hear a lot of crackling and things busting.
“I didn’t even know anyone had died until I got here and they said it was a man and his two kids. That got me shaking all over again,” she said. “It could have been me.”