Seven children, ages 5-15, were killed in a raging fire that destroyed a Brooklyn home early Saturday morning, law-enforcement sources said. The mother of at least three of the children, and one other youngster, were critically injured.
The fire started at 12:23 a.m. in the brick home on Bedford Avenue between avenues L and M in Midwood.
Photo: Seth Gottfried
Photo: Seth Gottfried
FDNY firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze while Hatzolah and other paramedics frantically worked to keep the victims alive.
“Two of the children weren’t breathing when they brought them out. The firefighters were running with them down the street on stretchers,” said a Hatzolah volunteer at the scene.
“The mother was covered in soot. It’s horrible inside.”
A small boy lay motionless on a stretcher as Hatzolah volunteers wheeled him into a waiting ambulance, his face and hands streaked with ash.
“I knew it was bad news,” said neighbor Nate Weber, referring to the moment he first saw the children being wheeled away on stretchers.
“I just turned away. I didn’t even want to look.”
Weber even heard the mother yelling for someone to help her trapped children.
“I heard a woman yelling, My kids are in there Get them out Get them out!” Weber told the Post. She was later taken to the burn unit at Jacobi hospital in the Bronx.
An FDNY firefighter clutched another child with bare legs and feet in his arms as he sprinted to a waiting ambulance.
The Hatzolah volunteers gave oxygen to a woman on a stretcher with bloodied hands and feet as they rushed her to medical care.
“It was horrific,” a law-enforcement source said.
A FDNY truck extended its ladder under a snow-covered tree to the second floor window of the brick home.
A total of 25 FDNY engines and other units, along with 106 firefighters and other personnel, responded to the deadly blaze, a FDNY spokesman said.

