Results tagged “chelseafire”

Yesterday, funeral services were held for five people killed in a Chelsea apartment fire. Delkis Balbuena and her three daughters, ages 15 months, 3 years, and 8 years, and her 10-year-old, were mourned by family and friends--who gasped at the sight of the five coffins-- at Saint Elizabeth's Church in Washington Heights. The children's father, Maschay Valdez, was separated from Balbeuna but had been visiting during the fire and was buried over the weekend; his sister told NY1, "My father wanted to pay for the funeral for all of them, but the family from the mother side didn't want them to do it all together." The FDNY found that the apartment's smoke detector had been disabled--please check your smoke detectors monthly.

The 10-year-old survivor of a Chelsea fire that claimed his parents' and three sisters' lives was taken off life support yesterday. Jonzan Joa-Balbuena had been at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, in critical condition, since the Saturday blaze. He was later found to be brain dead, and his relatives decided to take him off his respirator and donate his organs. His uncle said, "We tried to do our best for him... we prayed hard. He knows we tried to keep him alive." And a family advocate who was helping with funeral arrangements for the other deceased family members wept to the Daily News, "I have to buy a [funeral] suit for the little boy now, after buying clothes for the other children, too." The FDNY found the apartment's smoke detector had been disabled.

Yesterday, the FDNY said that the Chelsea apartment fire that claimed five lives was likely caused by a child playing with matches or a lighter. Fire officials apparently found remnants of matches or a lighter in the kitchen, "where papers atop it fueled the blaze," according to the Post. Neighbors also said one of the children "played with fire in the past." But Leonel Balbeuna, brother of the mother who died alongside her husband and three children, said, "There's no way they played with matches. If they say it was matches, they need real proof." Tenants of the building, owned by the NYC Housing Authority, are holding an emergency fire meeting, about the building's firetrap conditions--there are no fire escapes, the window guards are difficult to remove, and the layouts are tricky.