Space heater blamed although central air heating working. Maybe they were drying thier grub jerky?...

http://www.wnbc.com/news/11197849/detail.html?dl=mainclick

8 Children, 1 Adult Die In Bronx Fire

NEW YORK -- A devastating fire swept through a three-story brick home in the Bronx, killing eight children and one adult and leaving several others seriously injured Thursday in one of New York City's deadliest blazes in recent memory, authorities said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the fire may have resulted from a space heater or an overloaded power strip. It was New York City's deadliest fire in 17 years, not withstanding the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It's obviously terrible for anyone to perish like this," the mayor said. "It just seems more painful and more unfair when children die. When children die, everyone around them seems to die a little as well."

Witnesses described a ghastly sight of seeing a woman hurl children through broken windows in hopes of saving the kids from the raging inferno.

"All I see is just a big cloud of white dust and out of nowhere comes the first baby," said Edward Soto, who caught the child. He said he caught a second child thrown from the window moments later.

All the while, screams of "help me, help me" spread through the home, said Soto, who helped rescue the children along with fellow neighbor David Todd.

The child victims ranged in age from an infant to 10. A woman in her 40s also died. Bloomberg said 22 people lived in the house, all of whom were related and from the west African nation of Mali. The home had two smoke alarms, but neither had batteries.

The smell of smoke lingered hours afterward at the scene, located a few blocks from Yankee Stadium. Windows of the house were broken out, and parts of the building were scorched. Charred pieces of rubble were piled up on the front porch. Emergency workers wrapped children in blankets and rushed them away from the fire. Adding to the misery, the victims were displaced on one of the coldest nights of the year.

Kate Lindquist, a spokeswoman for the city Buildings Department, said there were no complaints or violations on record against the building, which was built in 1901.

Neighbor Elaine Martin was one of the first to discover the fire. A shoeless woman in a nightgown was on the street, shivering in the blistering cold and frantically worrying about her children.

"My kids is in there, my kids is in there," Martin quoted the woman as saying.

At least 10 people were injured, five of them seriously. Four firefighters and one other emergency worker were hospitalized with minor injuries.

Michael Heller, spokesman at Jacobi Medical Center, said five children ranging in age from 2 to 7 were taken to the Bronx hospital. They are suffering smoke inhalation and burns. Heller said one of the victims -- an infant less than a year old -- died at Jacobi.

Errol Schneer, a spokesman at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, said three victims were taken to the hospital, all of whom were dead on arrival. They included a woman in her 40s and two boys ages 4 and 9.

Bourema Niambele, an officer in the High Council of Malians in the United States, says the patriarch of the group is Moussa Madassa. He is active in the Mali organization and happens to be in his homeland on a business trip. Bourema says that Moussa has lived here for at least 15 years.

Neighbors said at least one of the families ran an import-export business, and a public records search lists African American Import Export at the address.

The block where the fire occurred is largely residential, including small apartment buildings, townhouses, and a couple of businesses and free-standing homes.

Mali, one of the world's poorest countries which has 25 percent of its nationals abroad, is one of the main sources of clandestine migration to Europe, with thousands of people risking the journey by sea to reach the EU's southern shores.

David Robinson, who lives in the neighborhood, said the victims seemed to be a close-knit group. "The kids were always playing, either in the yard of their home or on the block with water guns and scooters."

The fire was reported shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday and was extinguished shortly after 1 a.m., said fire department spokesman Seth Andrews. It burned in the basement and first floor of the home, Andrews said.

The injured people were taken to local hospitals including Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center, Jacobi Medical Center, and Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, Andrews said.

The previous deadliest fire in New York happened in 1990, when 87 people were killed in an illegal Bronx social club known as Happy Land. (Indeed, Happy Land. Happy for us Whites that no longer have to suffer 87 illegal muds.)