> This was indeed tragic,May the Almighty bless their souls and
> grant them Jannah,Ameen.

> Niamorkono.

> New York City fire tragedy kills eight children, one adult
> By our reporter
> 9 March 2007
> Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
> In the latest inferno devastating the poorer sections of the
> American working class, eight children and one adult were killed
> late Wednesday night in a fire that destroyed a century-old,
> four-story building in which more than two dozen people lived in
> the Highbridge section of the Bronx, in New York City. As many
> as 19 people were injured and five remained hospitalized
> Thursday evening, three of them children still unconscious.
> All the victims were members of three immigrant families from
> the West African country of Mali. The owner of the building,
> Moussa Magassa, a former carpenter in the city's school system,
> lived there with his wife and 11 children. Five of them, all
> young boys, died: Bilaly, 1; Djaba, 3; Aboukary, 6; Mahmadou, 7;
> and Bandiogou, 11. Moussa Magassa was visiting relatives in Mali
> at the time of the fire, and was informed of the tragedy in a
> phone call from his brother.
> Fatoumata Soumare, 45, threw two of her unconscious children
> from windows three stories above ground to be caught by
> neighbors and rescuers, in a desperate effort to save their
> lives. Driven by the flames, she then jumped herself. Both
> children and their mother died.
> The horrible scenes recalled the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of a
> century ago, when immigrant sweatshop girls jumped to their
> deaths to escape flames. It was the city's deadliest fire since
> the 1990 Happy Land social club inferno in the Bronx that killed
> 87 people, almost all of them Honduran immigrants.
> When the fire broke out, Mrs. Soumare called her husband,
> Mamadou, a cab driver working the night shift, on his cell
> phone. He called 911, and then rushed back to the house, but too
> late. In addition to his wife, he lost his three-year-old son
> Djibril, 3, and seven-month-old twins Sisi and Harouma. His
> fourth child, seven-year-old Hassimy, survived.
> As in a long series of such tragedies, the social element is
> what stands out as the cause of the deaths: the poverty and
> oppression that affect tens of millions of working class
> families, especially pronounced in the immigrant neighborhoods
> of New York City, where real estate is among the most expensive
> in the world.
> As many as four families, a total of 22 people, lived in the
> building at 1022 Woodycrest, a single-family house that had been
> subdivided into two apartments. They had left Mali, one of the
> poorest countries in the world, crippled by drought and a
> century of French colonial rule. They lived in a building that
> was more than 100 years old, made of wood, without working smoke
> detectors, and without a fire escape. Initial reports suggested
> that a space heater was the cause of the fire: New York City is
> in the midst of a near-record cold wave.
> The Highbridge neighborhood is only a few blocks from Yankee
> Stadium, home of the most lucrative franchise in professional
> sports, owned by billionaire George Steinbrenner. Another
> billionaire, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, all but blamed
> the residents of the building for the fire tragedy.
> "Using stoves, using space heaters, these are dangerous ways to
> heat a house," Bloomberg told a press conference after the
> disaster. "The central heating was working. It is still working.
> The Fire Department checked it this morning. It wasn't a case
> where there was not heat."
> "There were two smoke detectors," Bloomberg added.
> "Unfortunately, neither had batteries in them." He also said
> that the residents had not responded to the fire in the way
> prescribed by fire officials—which includes shutting the door
> behind them if they see flames—and they had also delayed calling
> 911, trying to get out of the building first.
> Given that the adults were all immigrants from a French-speaking
> country, it is quite possible they were unfamiliar with such
> procedures and could have had language difficulties in calling
> in an alarm. There have been no reports on the families' legal
> status, but that could have inhibited them from calling the
> authorities as well.
> See Also:
> Seven die in Pennsylvania house fire
> [23 February 2007]
> Deadly house fire in Petersburg, Virginia: the human cost of
> social inequality
> [1 February 2007]
> US: Chicago fire kills six children
> [5 September 2006]
> Top of page
> The WSWS invites your comments.
>
>
>
> Copyright 1998-2007
> World Socialist Web Site
> All rights reserved
>
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