Ignored bad-stove complaints: court claim

A HEROIC MOTHER of two young children who lived in a NYCHA apartment says they were all badly injured when a faulty stove she had repeatedly asked the city to fix ignited a raging blaze in their home.

Diana Baez, her 9-year-old son and her 4-year-old daughter are plaintiffs in a planned suit against the Housing Authority and the city — accusing agency workers of ignoring complaints about the stove in their Amsterdam Houses apartment on the Upper West Side.

In fact, as recently as a month before the fire on March 16, 2017, the mom complained to NYCHA that the stove turned on by itself, according to their lawyer Eric Schwarz.

To make matters worse, the family had no warning about the fire because the smoke detector didn’t work, Schwarz said. The mother complained to NYCHA about the detector before the blaze as well.

“I think it’s really frightening that people can make complaints to the city’s largest landlord about a piece of equipment in their home that can be a potential safety threat to a young family living there — and nothing’s done about it until it’s too late,” Schwarz said.

Baez, 42, and the two children were all severely burned in the fire.

The mother also suffered debilitating respiratory problems from smoke inhalation.

Less than two months after the blaze, she was taken to a hospital after suffering shortness of breath and chest pain. Her heart stopped several times while at the hospital and she has been in a medically induced coma since then, her family said.

Baez had planned to sue before being hospitalized.

“My sister is still here and fighting and all we do is pray God will help us all,” Baez’s sister Johanna Araujo said.

Araujo said Baez and her family have their pet dog, Zoe, to thank for alerting them to the fire that ill-fated morning. The pooch’s barking woke up Baez’s 19-year-old daughter, Cliana, who also lived in the apartment.

Diana Baez went into “supermom mode” during the blaze, heroically navigating the dark smoke and intense heat to rescue her two little ones, Araujo said.

Then Baez went back into the