Qns. fire kills girl, 7, mom

A fire tore through a Queens home Sunday morning, killing a 7year-old girl and her mother and leaving her teenage brothers hospitalized, authorities and neighbors said.

For one of the family’s next-door neighbors on 117th Street in Richmond Hill, the first sign something was wrong was the shrieks of single mom Silvia Umana echoing down the block at 9:30 a.m.

“I woke up to her screams. Very loud. Terror screams,” recalled Inderjit Singh, 22. “Then I smelled the smoke.”

Singh grabbed a few possessions and ran out in time to see a small army of firefighters rushing up Atlantic Avenue to battle the inferno on a day that temperatures cracked triple-digits.

“The flames were very hot, coming out all the windows,” Singh recalled. “It was too hot here. We had to move back.”

About 100 firefighters from 25 units battled the two-alarm blaze in shifts to stay fresh.

“Think about it: Our members respond, they wear a lot of gear, quickly overheat [and risk] heat exhaustion, which could subsequently lead to heatstroke,” FDNY Deputy Chief Michael Ajello said.

“We have to rotate our personnel frequently at a fire like this.”

Eventually, the firefighters emerged from the engulfed twostory home bearing a grim load.

“The firemen carried the children out in their arms,” Singh said. “I saw them carry out two children.”

Both Umana, 51, and her 7-yearold daughter, Guadalupe Perez — known to neighbors as Lupita — died in the blaze, officials said.

“Lupita, she was amazing, a very smart little kid, always smiling,” said teary neighbor Remona Elehie, 47, who often babysat the children when Umana was at work. “A beautiful little smile.” Elehie added that Umana was often seen in the neighborhood accompanying Lupita.

“The little girl is the light of her life,” Elehie said. “She’s always taking her around the block with her little bike or her little scooter.”

Umana’s sons, 19 and 15, were rushed to area hospitals in critical and stable condition, respectively.

Another next-door neighbor, 13year-old Hayley Santiago, said she saw emergency responders fighting to revive one of the sons.

“He laid down and they were doing CPR on him,” she recalled.

Santiago, meanwhile, had managed her own harrowing escape from the fire — aided by her 2month-old kitten, Diamond.

“My cat got on my face and started meowing. It wouldn’t leave,” the girl said.

“I woke up and the room was full of smoke and someone was banging on the door downstairs, very loud. I went downstairs and they said, ‘Fire! You have to get out,’ ” she recalled. “I grabbed my cat and ran outside.”

The blaze, believed to have started on the first floor, was contained by about 10:50 a.m. Its cause was being investigated.