Heartbreaking New Details About Harlem Fire Victims Emerge
A New York City community came together Wednesday for the family who perished in a raging apartment fire in Harlem as heartbreaking new details about the victims emerge.
The flames that broke out in a fifth-floor apartment kitchen at the Frederick E. Samuel Apartments on Seventh Avenue were so intense the family didn’t have enough time to get out.
The blaze claimed the lives of 45-year-old Andrea Pollidore and children -- 4- and 8-year-old boys, 6- and 11-year-old girls -- along with her 32-year-old stepson Mac.
Raven Reyes, whose mother and siblings were killed in the fire, had no words to describe her pain.
“It’s just unbelievable. It’s unbearable. It’s indescribable,” she said.
Reyes described 11-year-old Nakiya as “so smart.” Eight-year-old Andre wanted to play ball. Four-year-old Elijah loved Honey Buns. And six-year-old Brooklyn was a princess.
Wednesday’s deadly fire wasn’t the first brush up the mother of eight had with flames. Family members said she survived two previous fires in different homes.
New video released by the FDNY shows how the destructive flames gutted the family’s apartment, a fire investigators say was sparked by something left on the stove.
A source close to the probe tells News 4 investigators found a burner in the "on" position, adding that family members told investigators Pollidore would disconnect her smoke alarm when cooking.
NYCHA Interim Chair and CEO Kathryn Garcia explained the building, constructed in 1910 and renovated in 1994, has 62 units and houses 129 residents. Additionally, she said, records indicate that combination fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors were installed in June 2017 and tested in January 2019.
Community and family members are trying to raise money for funeral expenses for the victims.
It's one of the deadliest New York City fires in years. In 2017, one in the Bronx, sparked by a toddler playing with a stove, killed a dozen people.
Ten years earlier, 10 people died -- nine of them children -- in a four-story house fire in the Bronx. Excluding the Sept. 11 attacks, the 2017 fire was the city's deadliest since 1990, when 87 people were killed at a social club fire in another part of the borough.
from NBC New York - Top Stories http://bit.ly/2VUIAKi
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