GRAN DIES IN FIRE
Had stayed behind to ensure grandson’s safety
A fearless great-grandmother died making sure her grandson escaped a massive Bronx house fire Tuesday morning that also injured eight others, the victim’s family and the FDNY said.
Betty Lee, 73, stayed at her 27-year-old grandson Kareem’s bedroom door to wake him as the flames tore through the family’s two-story home on Valentine Ave. near E. 182nd St. in Fordham Heights, her daughter told the Daily News.
Lee’s grandson had escaped through a window, but by that time “the smoke was too thick” for Lee to escape, her devastated daughter Shutesha (Nina) Earl told the Daily News.
“You always think about what you could have done differently. I should’ve just grabbed my mom’s arm and just pulled her out,” she lamented.
Eight other people were hurt in flames that erupted around the corner from Twin Parks North West — where 17 people died, including eight children, in a January blaze.
Tuesday’s blaze quickly spread to two adjoining buildings, said neighbor Mariel Diaz, who raced out of her home with her 65-yearold mother when they saw the smoke.
“We saw the fire immediately and it spread really quickly,” Diaz said as she watched an army of firefighters work to extinguish the blaze. “I just hope everybody got out. You can recover everything except for a life.”
Firefighters found Lee’s body inside the burned building.
Lee, a native of Hackensack, N.J., had three children, 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, her daughter said. Before coming to the Bronx, she was living with a son in Salt Lake City.
“She was a beautiful mom, grandma, grandmother, great grandmother. She was everything I had,” Earl said, adding that she was overjoyed when her mom moved in with her in January 2021.
“She came to my door. I was so excited because, at least my mom’s last years, I’ll be able to live out with her. Unfortunately, they came too soon,” she said.
Earl said she woke up to her alarm at 8:30 a.m., then heard her mother’s walker go “Boom! Boom! Boom! downstairs, and realized the house was ablaze.
“She had made it by the kitchen and was right by the back room,” Earl said.
Earl’s son Kareem was sleeping in his bedroom, so she and Lee yelled at him to wake up, she recounted. Earl said she then filled a metal pot with water in a failed attempt to quench the flames roaring in the living room, then tossed the pot at Kareem’s door, waking him.
As the smoke blackened, Earl insisted Lee leave with her through the front porch, but the selfless grandmother told her daughter: “I’m not leaving here until I can get Kareem out of here.” Earl said.
At some point, Kareem escaped through a window, Earl related, adding she didn’t even realize Lee was still in the house until she got to the porch.
“I see she wasn’t coming behind me, then I was like trying to turn,” she said. She tried to go back inside, but the smoke overwhelmed her, she said.
An additional six residents and two firefighters suffered minor injuries, FDNY officials said.
Residents who escaped unhurt gathered at a church across the street from the burning home cradling photos and mementos they grabbed before they fled the flames.
More than 160 firefighters and EMS members were called in to battle the blaze and treat the injured. The cause of the blaze was under investigation.
Tuesday’s fire was just 500 feet from the Twin Parks North West apartment complex, where on Jan. 9, a fire inside an apartment quickly spread through the building, causing 17 deaths. It was the deadliest fire in the city in three decades. An electrical heater that had been running in the apartment for days sparked that blaze, fire marshals determined.