Tragedy in Queens: 5 People, Including 3 Children, Die in House Fire

New York City’s deadliest house fire in two years killed five people, including three children, on Sunday afternoon, as flames surged through a middle-class neighborhood of Queens Village.

The fast-moving fire broke out shortly after 2:30 p.m., on a street full of single-family homes. Flames chewed through the roof of the two-story home and roaring in upstairs rooms as smoke poured from the house.

“This is a devastation of a family,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said, speaking at the scene of the three-alarm fire. He said it was “a fire that moved very, very quickly, and the loss was horrendous.”

“There’s a lot we need to know about what happened here, especially the fact that this happened in the middle of an afternoon on a day when the weather was good,” the Democrat said. “How could something like this have happened? There are many questions and our fire marshals will get to work on that right away.”

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said witnesses saw someone tumble from a two-story window as smoke billowed. The person, a roughly 46-year-old man, fell onto a porch roof and then a lawn and survived, he said.

Firefighters struggled to reach some of the victims who were as high up as the attic, a “super-human” task for firefighters to reach people in a home engulfed by such a massive fire, Nigro said. He said the wood-frame home burned rapidly.

First-responders carried a limp child from the wreckage.

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” neighbor Foster McPhee, 67, told the New York Post. “The guy who was carrying the baby out, you could just see the stress on his face. I’m just emotional about it because I’m a grandfather and I have kids, too.”

Nigro said the victims ranged in age from 2 to 21, plus one adult who was somewhat older.

There was no immediate theory on what started the blaze, but Nigro said there appeared to be no explosion, even though witnesses reported hearing loud booms.

Witness Tiasha Johnson told the Daily News that the family’s relative screamed for the little ones.

“They were screaming, ‘Get the kids out! Get the kids out!’” Johnson said. “It took the firefighters a while to get in. The fire was pretty bad. They were jumping from the windows. The smoke was heavy.”

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the April 24th, 2017 edition of Hamodia.