NEW YORK — A day after a deadly Bronx fire killed 17 people, Yusupha Jawara frantically searched local hospitals and called government information lines trying to find out what happened to his missing younger brother and sister-in-law.
So far he’s come up empty-handed but fears the worst, knowing he will have to return to his own nearby apartment where his nieces and nephews are waiting for news about their missing parents.
“The minimum we want is information,” Jawara said. “We went to the hospital, sitting there for 11 hours. Nobody slept, just calling and calling.”
He’s been fielding frantic calls from friends and family trying to learn what happened to his brother and the brother’s wife.
The names of the 17 victims who died of smoke inhalation in the Fordham Heights high-rise fire sparked by a faulty space heater have not been released. The toll was revised from 19 by Mayor Eric Adams Monday afternoon.
Many members of the 21 families displaced by the blaze are still wondering where to turn for answers.
Jawara, 46, said he has been back and forth from the hospital and called 311 almost a dozen times only to be told there is no new information to share.
He stood outside the Masjid Ar-Raham mosque on Webster Avenue, where many of the building’s residents worship, hoping they had some information.
“We want to know who is alive and who is dead,” Jawara said. “That is all we want to know.”
The thought of having to return to his apartment with bad news for his two nieces, ages 14 and 11, and two nephews, 4 and 7, overwhelmed him. He broke down in tears at the thought of facing his brother’s children with potential bad news.
“I can’t even look them in the eye,” he said. “If I see them, they’re going to ask me. I don’t want to lie to them.”
Later, Jawara showed up at a press conference held by Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, asking for answers.
The mosque’s imam, Musa Kabba, 62, said he was doing his best to pass the information along to Jawara and others at the mosque but said he was facing the same obstacles.
“It’s like red tape,” said Kabba. “Nobody is telling us anything. They told us to call 311 — we called them six more times from yesterday.”
Kabba read from a preliminary list of victims he obtained from police. He paused in pain at almost every entry, their names familiar to him.
“We’re still looking for them,” he said of the victims’ families.
Community groups have pitched in to bring relief to the survivors. A GoFundMe set up by the Gambian Youth Organization has already raised over $400,000. The group’s headquarters are just a few blocks from the burned building.
“We’ve set up a fundraiser so that we could get funds directly to all victims,” said Salim Drammeh, 26, president of the Gambian Youth Organization. “We opened our community center to take in donations. We are taking donations of food and clothes.”
The group has run a food pantry since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and now serves more than 16,000 families. Some of those families lost members in Sunday’s fire.
“We contacted a mother yesterday and she told me she lost two of her kids,” Drammeh said. “These are our people, these are our families.”
Salim said that it’s not just food and clothing that the families need but emotional support as well.
“You have families that lost every single thing,” Drammeh said. “But within that shock, the community again really came out, came through and provided support for each other even though this is something that’s been really hurtful. ”
“There’s a guy that came in, his wife passed away last year. He came in and donated his wife’s coat,” Drammeh added. “You can tell that comes from the heart. So this community, even though we’ve been going through a lot right now, people have come together. That’s the one amazing thing.”
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