Seven ultra-Orthodox children killed in Brooklyn blaze

NEW YORK — A fire that tore through a home in a heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood, leaving seven children dead and two other people in critical condition, may have been caused by a malfunctioning hot plate left on for Shabbat, the city’s fire commissioner said Saturday.

Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the deceased range in age from 5 to 15 years old.

A 45-year-old woman thought to be their mother and another girl, 14, escaped by jumping out of windows and were being treated in area hospitals in critical condition.

The woman is believed to be the mother of all eight children, Nigro said.

“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.”

“To find a house full of children that can’t be revived, I’m sure this will take its toll on our members for quite some time,” Nigro said, according to CNN.

The names of the deceased were not released. Nigro said he believed the father was at a conference and officials have not yet been able to contact him.

The victims were three girls aged eight, 12 and 15; and four boys aged five, six, seven and 11.

The mother and the eight children were in at least five upstairs bedrooms when the fire broke out in the kitchen downstairs.

Fire investigators found a smoke detector in the basement of the home, but so far none have been found elsewhere in the house, Nigro said.

“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.

Firefighters received a call at 12:23 a.m. about the blaze at the single-family home in Midwood, a leafy section of Brooklyn known for its low crime and large Orthodox Jewish population. Fire department spokesman Jim Long said more than 100 firefighters responded and brought the blaze under control by around 1:30 a.m.

Hot plates are a method for religious Jews to heat food on Shabbat without turning appliances on or off. Many families simply leave them on throughout the day so they are usable without violating prohibitions against doing work.

A man who lives next door to the burned home told the New York Times that the family was large and loving and that some of the kids had helped neighbors shovel snow on Friday.

“They’re very good people, the kids were always helping people,” he told the newspaper.

Neighbor Nate Weber told the New York Post that he saw children being wheeled away on stretchers.

“I just turned away. I didn’t even want to look,” he said.

Weber told the New York Daily News he heard the children’s mother yelling for someone to rescue her children after she jumped from a window.

“I heard a woman yelling: ‘My kids are in there. Get them out! Get them out!'” he told the Post.