The heroic mom who tossed her two children out the window rather than let them perish in the flames, was one of the five fatalities of a three-alarm fire in Brooklyn yesterday. Fire officials are now saying the blaze—which also hospitalized 13 firefighters—could be a case of arson. The two-month old girl who was thrown by her mother from a third-floor window fractured her skull, but is expected to survive. Her brother escaped from the fire unscathed.
Firefighters arrived at the Bensonhurst blaze at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday. Amid intense flames residents were trying to escape, but were thwarted by bars on the windows and furniture blocking the rear fire exits. Fire officials also said the building did not have working fire alarms, reported NY 1. The crowded conditions made escape especially difficult—about twenty Guatemalan immigrants were living on each floor, reported the Post. Rescuers were able to save three people with ladders, but four men and the kids’ mother Luisa Chan were killed.
Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano says arson was the fire’s probable cause. "A very unusual place for this fire to start, it started right behind the front door to the entrance and that's not where a fire would normally start. That's why this is a fire that we are saying it is very likely to be incendiary," he said. Investigators are looking at surveillance footage from nearby businesses and analyzing the fire’s damage for more clues.
The Daily News chose to relate the story through an odd work of lyric poetry, told from the perspective of the boy who survived his flight from the building's window:
He would have felt the neighbor passing him down to a firefighter on a portable ladder.
He may have seen the firefighter begin to help his father down.
But he would not have known that at that very instant his mother's hand was slipping from his father's hand, that she was saying what will no doubt be repeated to him in later years when he asks about her last words.
"Cuidensen a los hijos." Take care of the kids.
A memorial for the victims of the fire is being held tonight at Jovenes Cristianos Evangelical Church on 17th Avenue in Brooklyn at 6 p.m.
