The Associated Press
NEW YORK — The father of five children killed with their cousins in the city’s deadliest fire in 17 years flew home to the U.S. Friday after learning the devastating news while on a business trip in his native Mali.
Moussa Magassa’s mosque had already started helping the extended family plan for the funerals of the nine victims, and Imam Konate Souleimane said other mosques across the region would be gathering donations Friday to help the survivors.
The tentative plan was to fly the only adult killed in the blaze, Fatoumata Soumare, and her three children to Mali for burial, while Magassa’s children would be buried in the New York area, he said.
“These people are good Muslims,” said Dukary Camara, a spokesman for Islamic Cultural Center, where Soumare’s husband joined other grieving relatives and supporters in prayer Thursday night.
“They understand that what is destiny for them, there’s nothing that can prevent that from happening,” he said.
The fire stared with a space heater in the home late Wednesday night and quickly climbed through the three-story house, authorities said.
Inside, the family apparently tried to extinguish the flames themselves, but those on the upper floors were trapped.
When Fatoumata Soumare called her husband, she seemed to know she was doomed.
Mamadou Soumare was driving his livery cab through Harlem when he got the frantic call.
“She said, `We have a fire,”’ he recalled. “She was screaming.”
“I might die with my kids,” she told him.
Mamadou Soumare called 911, but by the time he got home, the house was a fiery tomb. Two neighbors, Edward Soto and David Todd, had rescued a couple of children tossed from a window, but for the others it was too late.
Neighbor Charles O’Neal, 21, said he saw firefighters pass along babies still clad in their pajamas and lay two dead children on sheets of white plastic.
Family members identified the dead as Fatoumata Soumare, 42, her son Dgibril and 7-month-old twins Sisi and Harouma. The couple’s fourth child, 7-year-old Hasimy, escaped, her father said. Family members provided different name spellings than the authorities did.
Magassa lost four sons — Bandiougou, 11, Mahamadou, 8, Abudubucary, 5, and Bilaly, 1, and his 3-year-old daughter Diaba. Their mother and six siblings survived. City records and phone listings spell their surname as Magassa, although various other spellings were provided after the fire.
“It’s very, very, very sad what has happened,” said Imam Mahamadou Soukouna, a Muslim cleric and family friend. He described Magassa, an official of the New York chapter of the international High Council for Malians Living Abroad, as “the best in our community.”
Twenty-two people in all lived in the home’s two apartments a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, 17 of them children.
At least three children were among the injured. A 7-year-old girl was in critical condition at Jacobi Medical Center, and a pair of 6-year-olds were upgraded from critical to good condition and transferred to Lincoln Hospital.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Mamadou Soumare said, casting tearful eyes at the burned-out building. “I love her. I love my wife.”
The home had two smoke alarms but the batteries were missing, authorities said.
The family that owned the building had planned renovations, including sprinklers that would have drenched the hallways and the home’s central stairwell in the event of a fire, city records show. A change to multi-family status would have also required the at least one additional fire-resistant stairwell, city buildings officials said, but the project was suspended by the city for further evaluation.
The fire was the city’s deadliest since the 1990 Happy Land social club blaze in the Bronx killed 87 people, with the exception of the World Trade Center attacks.
“I can’t recollect a fire where we lost eight children,” said Chief of Department Salvatore Cassano, who has 37 years in the department.
The blaze broke hearts from the South Bronx to West Africa. All the parents had immigrated from Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world.
“We are standing with them and supporting them, and we are thanking God,” said Camara, of the Islamic Cultural Center. “God is the one who gives us the children and the family, and he is the one who takes them.”