Elijah, 3 years old. Brooklyn, 6 years old. Andre, 8 years old. Nakiyra, 11 years old. Four beautiful children killed by fire, as was their mother, 45-year-old Andrea Pollidore, and Matt Abdularaph, her 32-year-old stepson.
We do not yet know what might have prevented the unspeakable horror of an entire family extinguished in the dead of night. The Fire Department says flames and smoke traveled from the kitchen, where it seems a stove's gas had been left running, and engulfed six souls in the Housing Authority's Frederick Samuel Houses.
There are eerie echoes here of the December 2017 fire in the Bronx, the deadliest in memory, when a dozen people perished after a 3-year-old played with the knobs on a kitchen stove. And fears that annual fire fatalities, which had fallen to a 100-year low in 2016 before surging to a 10-year high in 2018, could rise again.
We must reconstruct what happened with all possible precision, no matter how painful the revelations may be.
NYCHA officials say a smoke and carbon monoxide detector was installed in the apartment in June 2017, and had been tested as recently as this January. But as the Daily News reported yesterday, tenants who escaped the building say they heard no alarms; Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said firefighters heard no alarms either as they worked their way through the smoke.
Why not?
Is there any connection between the development's February 2017 failed health and safety inspection by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the tragedy? Find out.
Days before Mother's Day would have given them an opportunity to honor their caregiver, four children are lost. Mourn the dead. Bless the firefighters who prevented the blaze from spreading. Do everything humanly possible to spare victims of the fire next time.
