By DAVID PORTER
The Associated Press
IRVINGTON, N.J. — An 8-year-old girl was killed and four others were injured in a Sunday morning fire at a home here, fire and city officials said.
Among the injured was an off-duty Irvington firefighter who ran into the burning home to help usher residents out.
The girl’s 4-year-old brother remained in critical condition Sunday at the burn unit in St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, said Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the Essex County prosecutor’s office.
Loriquet said the children were staying with their grandmother and wheelchair-bound great-grandmother on the second floor of the three-story house. Both women were taken to St. Barnabas but Loriquet did not have details on their conditions.
Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith, who was on the scene Sunday, said two firefighters who had just finished their shift were driving to a convenience store in the neighborhood and spotted the blaze around 7:30 a.m.
Brothers Sergio and Juan Hreben, who live across from the house on a street of well-kept two- and three-story homes, saw the two firefighters pull up in front of the house in a pickup truck and rescue the disabled great-grandmother.
“They broke the front door in, then they broke a second interior door,” Sergio Hreben said through an interpreter. “One of the firefighters and some of the neighbors carried the woman out in their arms. Then they tried to go back in, but they couldn’t because there was too much smoke.”
The grandmother was brought around from the back of the house, according to Hreben.
One of the firefighters suffered smoke inhalation as he tried to get people out of the home. He was also taken to St. Barnabas, where he was treated and released Sunday, Smith said.
Smith said the fire started in the second-story unit and appeared to be accidental, but he had no information on how it started. Arson investigators were at the scene, which fire officials said was standard anytime someone dies in a fire.
Anthony Booth, 21, who lived on the third floor, said he woke up around 7 a.m. because he smelled smoke.
“I looked around and went out on the roof, and it was all smokey,” he said.
Booth said he woke up his cousin, and both were able to leave down a fire escape on the side of the house.