GET THE KIDS OUT!
Anguished plea as fire rips thru home, killing 3 trapped children & 2 adults
A CATASTROPHIC fire killed three children and two adults who were trapped in a Queens house Sunday as devastated neighbors watched helplessly.
Orange flames licked out from the windows of the two-story house on 208th St. near 112th Ave. in Queens Village when the first 911 call came in at 2:36 p.m.
Firefighters battled valiantly, officials and witnesses said, but despite their best efforts, every victim they brought out was dead, including 2-year-old Chayce Green, 9-year-old Rayshawn Matthews and 14-year-old Jada Foxworth.
The other victims were a 20-year-old woman and another adult whose age and gender weren’t released as of early Monday. DaJuana Green lost her son Rayshawn and her grandson Chayce in the blaze. Standing on the sidewalk, she cried hysterically as thick smoke choked much of the neighborhood.
Witness Tiasha Johnson said neighbors cried out in terror for the little ones.
“They were screaming, ‘Get the kids out! Get the kids out!’ ”
Denise Coleman said the firefighters struggled desperately to rescue the children.
“People were screaming, ‘Get them out!’ The whole sky was black. There was a lot of smoke. The fire was very bad,” she said. “The firefighters carried some of the children out. They were limp. The whole house was on fire.”
Lenny Webb, 40, saw a man in his 70s trying to go in and rescue the kids.
“I told him, ‘It’s too late,’ ” Webb said. “There was too much smoke and fire. I was knocking on neighbors’ doors, telling them to get out. He was crying on the ground. He tried to get up and go in, but I told him he couldn’t go in. There was too much fire. His hands were burned.
“I said, ‘Listen, don’t go back in.’ It was too much. If he went back in, he would not have made it.”
Officials said the first emergency call came from a motorist who saw the fire from his car.
Plumber Zedias Mudzimba, 56, who lives nearby, said he was driving by the house and jumped out of his car to help.
“I saw the smoke coming out of the second floor, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to call 911,’ ” Mudzimba said. “I saw a man on the roof, he was screaming, ‘That’s my grandson, that’s my grandson!’ That’s all he was saying. The next thing, I saw he jumped off the roof. I didn’t see how he landed. I thought maybe he broke his leg.”
Fire officials said that man survived — the only one who made it out alive — and the 46-year-old
was hospitalized in stable condition.
The fire also spread to a house next door, but no one there was home, officials said.
Mudzimba said he was in awe of the effort firefighters made.
“The firefighters ran in that house with all the smoke and flames,” he said. “They were doing what they were supposed to do and I thought to myself, ‘These guys are so brave to do this.’ ”
Foster McPhee, 67, said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the fire and the children taken out.
“It was a lot of fire, a lot of flames, a lot of smoke,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it . . . . It was heartbreaking. The fire was very intense. It’s sad, very sad, especially for the children.”
Neighbors covered the distressed relatives to shield them from the media.
Rayshawn was part of the church choir at Tabernacle Community CME Church in St. Albans, a family friend said.
“He sang in choir. He was part of the Tabernacle Angels. It’s a terrible tragedy,” said the distraught family friend.
Mayor de Blasio was visibly moved as he spoke to reporters just yards away from the smoldering scene after the fire was under control.
“It’s a very difficult moment for people on this block, to see a family literally destroyed before their very eyes,” de Blasio said, surrounded by elected officials and fire officials. “It’s a very, very painful day.
“Five lives have been lost, including some young children, and our hearts go out to this family, and I’m asking all New Yorkers to keep this family in your prayers . . . . This is a devastation of a family we rarely, rarely see. “
Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the tragedy was taking a toll on firefighters who battled the blaze, many of whom are still reeling from the line-of-duty death last week of Firefighter William Tolley, 42. The married father of an 8-year-old girl fell five stories from a roof while fighting another fire in Queens.
“Most of our firefighters have families of their own, so I’m sure this is difficult for them. It always is,” Nigro said. “It’s a terrible tragic loss. This is a terrible sad time for this block this community and this entire city.”
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
“There’s a lot we need to know about what happened here, especially since this happened in the middle of an afternoon on a day when the weather was good,” de Blasio said.
The mayor said Sunday’s fire was the city’s deadliest since seven children perished in a Brooklyn blaze.
Seven of Gabriel and Gayle Sassoon’s eight children, ages 5 through 16, were killed March 21, 2015, when a middle-of-the-night fire destroyed their Borough Park home.
Fire officials blamed that blaze on a hot plate being used to honor the Orthodox Jewish prohibition against lighting a flame on the Sabbath.