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Posted on 06/25/2002 8:38:55 PM PDT by Bad~Rodeo
NEW YORK, June 25 (PNS): Seven members of a Pakistani family were burnt to death in their apartment located in the Brooklyn area of New York city on Sunday. The ill-fated family included the family head Muhammad Nadeem (43), his wife and five children, ageing eight months to 11 years. The cause of fire is under investigation, however, sources said that the fire started in the kitchen of another Pakistani family, residing in an apartment at the lower floor of the same building. The fire soon spread to the upper floor where Muhammad Nadeem and his family were residing in an apartment.
Someone made emergency call to "911", but by the time the fire brigade reached the scene, the fire had engulfed the whole apartment. None of the inmates could be saved. Charred bodies the fire victims were later taken to a nearby hospital for autopsy and investigation. On being informed, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City and other city officials rushed to the scene in the Borough of Brooklyn, where more than 60,000 Pakistanis reside. The whole of the Pakistani community is shocked over the tragic deaths.
The activists of Pakistani community -- Raana Saeed, Bilal Mirza, Aziz Butt, Manzar Butt and others -- have made arrangements for funeral prayers and transportation of bodies to Pakistan for burial. The bodies would be flown to Pakistan once the autopsy is completed. According to his friends, Muhammad Nadeem had been living in the US since 1987. He was engaged with the construction business. The ill-fated family had just returned to the US after a trip to their native town, Sialkot.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-fam0625.story
Friends Mourn Family
By Simone Weischelbaum, William Murphy and Bobby Cuza Staff Writers
June 24, 2002
Bismah Nadeem’s kindergarten class graduated Monday. When her classmates wondered why she wasn’t there, teachers sidestepped the question.
They felt the truth was too much for their 5-year-old minds to absorb: Bismah was gone, killed in a devastating fire that swept through her family’s Dyker Heights apartment Sunday.
Also killed in the blaze were Bismah’s parents, Mohammad, 44, and Yasmeen, 30, and her four sisters, Abeera, 13, Romeesa, 11, Nirma, 3, and Zanneb, 9 months.
As relatives made arrangements Monday to have the family’s bodies flown back to their native Pakistan for burial, friends, teachers and classmates mourned the incomprehensible loss of an entire family.
“They’re very beautiful girls,” a local librarian said of the Nadeem girls. “Saturday, I told the 3-year-old, ‘You always smile at me, but you never talk to me.’ And then Sunday happened.”
The fire began while a downstairs neighbor was heating cooking oil and engulfed the Nadeems’ third-floor apartment when the neighbor fled and left the door open.
The blaze spread so quickly and intensely that investigators Monday couldn’t determine if the building had smoke detectors.
The three-story walkup, constructed in 1931, was not required to have a sprinkler system, but the landlord, Christopher Theoharis, was responsible for providing battery-powered smoke detectors, though not maintaining them, officials said.
“There was such destruction in both apartments that we don’t know whether there were smoke alarms,” said Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon.
Friends and family members said Monday a funeral prayer would be held at the Makki Mosque at 1089 Coney Island Ave. in Midwood, and the bodies would then immediately be transported to Pakistan.
At IS 259, Abeera, a seventh-grader, was described by teachers as a standout student who often raised her hand when others didn’t. Romeesa, a fifth-grader at PS 176, had a knack for art, teachers said.
Abeera’s Spanish teacher, who only gave her name as Mrs. Devito, remembered that Abeera returned from her family’s recent four-month trip to Pakistan “with such a beautiful sash. I told her, ‘You remind me of royalty.’ I just adored her.”
“She was excellent,” said Mr. Ratzon, a math teacher who also declined to give his first name. “She sat in the front — always in the front.”
At the Nadeems’ charred three-story apartment building, meanwhile, window panes had been replaced with plywood. A steady stream of well-wishers left flower bouquets and stuffed animals at the foot of the building’s front entrance.
Some residents of the adjoining buildings, which also suffered heavy fire damage, were allowed briefly into their apartments to stuff their belongings into garbage bags and suitcases.
The American Red Cross said it had registered 20 adults and eight children displaced from their homes because of the fire.
“It’s a real mess,” said K.S. Siabanis, 56, who was forced to vacate his third-floor apartment along with his wife and son. But “it’s worse next door. Thank God we’re alive, at least.”
I have two babies of my own. I couldn't imagine wanting to live if they didn't.
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