Seven children die in Brooklyn fire

Seven children from the same family - ages 5 to 15 - died early Saturday in a fire in Brooklyn that the authorities said was caused by a malfunctioning hot plate.

The blaze was reported just before 12:30 a.m. at a single-family house on Bedford Avenue in the Midwood neighborhood, officials said.

At a press conference shortly after 8 a.m., Daniel A. Nigro, the fire commissioner, said a hot plate left on a counter on the first floor malfunctioned and started the fire that raced up the stairs to the second floor where nine family members were in bed.

The mother jumped out a front window. A daughter, 15, went out a side window. They both suffered burns and smoke inhalation. The other seven children, ages 5 to 15, died.

“This is the largest tragedy by fire that this city has had in seven years,” Nigro said. “It’s a tragedy for this family, it’s a tragedy for this community, it’s a tragedy for the city.”

Fire investigators found a smoke detector in the basement of the home but none on the first or second floors. They were still looking through the rubble.

“There was no evidence of smoke detectors on either the first or the second floor that may have alerted this family to the fire,” he said.

The children slept in five bedrooms in the back rear of the house, separated from the kitchen by an open stairwell that the fire raced up, Nigro said. The survivors were closest to the front of the home.

Firefighters were on scene in 3 1/2 minutes, officials said.

“Firefighters forced their way in, extinguished fire on the first floor, which had started in the kitchen,” he said, “then pushed upstairs and found the children in their bedrooms.”

The children’s father was away at a conference and had been difficult to reach, he said.

“It’s difficult to find one child in a room during a search,” he said. “To find a houseful of seven children that can’t be revived.”

He added that the hot plate was likely used because it was a way to keep food warm on the Jewish Sabbath without turning on the stove.

While he did not elaborate, many Orthodox Jewish families, forbidden from lighting fires during the Sabbath, keep food warm by lighting a burner on a stove before the Sabbath.

The mother was taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, which has a hyperbaric chamber to provide care to patients suffering from smoke inhalation.

The child was taken to Staten Island University Hospital. Both are in critical condition, officials said.

A large, square, charred hole gaped from the front of the light-colored house with a red roof on the snow-frosted block of Bedford Avenue at first light Saturday morning. Three fire engines flashed their lights on the block, which had been closed by police.

A man who lives next door to the burned house and declined to give his name said the family was large and loving; some of the children shoveled snow for neighbors on Friday.

“They’re very good people,” he said. “The kids were always helping people.”

The family had rented the home for about two years, he said.

He said he woke up around 1 a.m. to sirens and screams.

“I don’t get it,” he said, “I don’t understand it.”