Feb 20, 2009 6:22 am US/Eastern
Mother, 3 Children Killed In Long Island Fire
8 Leap From Apartment Window To Safety, Including Woman's Husband
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Firefighters are battling a 2-alarm fire that ripped through a two-story building in Lawrence on Thursday morning. The blaze claimed the lives of at least 2 people.
CBS
An early-morning fire engulfed two apartments above a coin-operated laundry on Long Island on Thursday, killing a woman, her two young daughters and her teenage son, CBS 2 HD has learned.
Eight people jumped out of the second-floor windows and survived.
"People were jumping from the house. They were jumping because the fire was beginning to engulf them," said witness Byron Alvarado.
Investigators said the fire did not start in the laundry. They were focusing their investigation on a stairway on the ground floor that leads to the second-floor apartments where two families were trapped.
While the fire was not being described as suspicious, investigators brought in a dog to sniff the scene to determine whether accelerant was used to make the fire spread.
The blaze, which was reported at 5:39 a.m., was so fierce that it damaged an adjoining building, displacing about 20 people.
The victims were identified as a 46-year-old woman; her 9- and 10-year-old daughters, and her 19-year-old son, said Nassau County Police spokesman Lt. Kevin Smith.
"It appears as though they just succumbed to the smoke," Smith told CBS 2 HD.
The 42-year-old father escaped, apparently unharmed, with two other children and an adult tenant. The surviving children are the 9-year-old's twin brother and a 12-year-old boy. All the survivors were taken to a hospital.
Hours after the fire, the bodies of the victims remained in the building. Names of the victims and survivors weren't immediately released.
Their neighbors, a family of four who lived in an adjacent apartment above the laundry, were also taken to a hospital as a precaution and treated for minor injuries.
The fire broke out in a neighborhood of working-class housing and industrial buildings in Lawrence, a village in southwest Nassau County near JFK International Airport and a few miles from New York City.
The scene is of the fire is adjacent to the Lawrence Long Island Rail Road station and down the block from St. Mary's Cemetery. An elementary school is a block away.
Marta Reyes, who lives a few blocks away, heard about the fire, rushed to the scene and learned that the woman who died was her friend. "She was a wonderful mother," said Reyes, weeping as she hugged other onlookers.
Reyes said she and the victim became friends in El Salvador, then were reunited after moving to the United States.
The Red Cross were trying to find housing for the 20 or so people who were evacuated from the apartment building next door.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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