3 Children Die In House Fire in Brooklyn
Three small children were killed yesterday in an electrical fire that swept through a row house in Brooklyn. Consolidated Edison Company officials said that electricity was being illegally siphoned through a tangle of extension cords from a power box under the sidewalk.
It was the second time in a year that such an illegal hookup had been discovered at the one-family house.
I knew it was going to happen; I told them mostly every day, 'You should get that fixed,' " said a longtime friend of the family, Carol Annunziata, as she pressed against a police tape 100 yards from the smoke-blackened front of 12 Downing Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section.
Ms. Annunziata, 31 years old, said all three floors of the red-brick building were receiving electricity through an octopus-like jumble of extension cords, all connected and plugged into a single socket in the front room on the first floor. On the second floor, she said, a hot plate had been sitting atop a space heater with frayed wires.
Consolidated Edison officials confirmed they had found a wire leading from the basement to the utility's power service box under the sidewalk. In April 1989, after the family failed to pay several bills, the utility cut off power to the building. 4th Child in Critical Condition
Fire Department officials said only that the cause of the fire was electrical.
A department spokesman, Tom Kelly, said the one-alarm fire was reported at 12:19 P.M.
Two children -- Sarina Green, 3 months old, and Jonathan Green, 2 years -- were pronounced dead at the scene. A 3-year-old boy, Charles Green, died later at Woodhull Medical Center. A 2-year-old girl, Danielle Anderson, was in critical condition with injuries from burns and smoke inhalation. Last night she was taken to the North American Hyperbaric Center on City Island in the Bronx, which treats smoke-inhalation victims in a pressurized chamber that forces oxygen into their blood and carbon monox ide out.
At Woodhull, in critical condition last night with burns and smoke inhalation, was their grandmother, Rosetta Anderson. Luwana Green, 29, the dead children's mother, was treated and released.
The fire started in the front room on the first floor, Mr. Kelly said. "Very heavy smoke" was coming from the first- and second-story windows when the first ladder truck arrived," he continued. "One of the neighbors was screaming, 'There's children in there, there's children in there.' "
Ladders were extended to the second floor, Mr. Kelly said, where one woman was found in the front room. After handing that woman out, firefighters went back inside and found two children in a rear bedroom. Meanwhile, firefighters on the first floor pushed through heavy flames to pull out another woman and two more children.
Firefighter Richard Radziewicz of Ladder Company 102 managed to save Danielle Anderson from the third floor. "I raised our aerial ladder to the third floor, the floor above the fire," he said. "I broke the window and climbed in. I was crawling around the floor when I came across Danielle.
"There was heavy smoke and heat. I could see, maybe, a couple of feet. I picked the child up off the floor and exited down the stairs, giving her mouth-to-mouth."
Moments after he left the building, said his commander, Lieut. Lawrence Quinn, the stairs burst into flames.
"If she does make it," Mr. Radziewicz said, "it'll feel good. Maybe 30 seconds later would have been too late." 'Fire Met Us at the Door'
Firefighter Mike Omerza, also of Ladder 102, will not have the same satisfaction. He removed Charles Green.
"We went up the stoop," Firefighter Omerza said. "The fire met us at the door. The guys with the hose knocked the flames down on the stairwell. We went up to the third floor and I found the kid. Everything in the room was melted. The paint was peeling off the room.
"I went around a sofa bed and I saw his feet sticking out from the bottom. I took him down. He had breathed in some very hot gas and air." Charles died later at Woodhull.
Martin Gitten, a spokesman for Con Ed, said workers at the house yesterday found that a wire had been run from the basement to a power box under the sidewalk. It clearly was an unauthorized hookup, Mr. Gitten said.
The company had cut off electricity to the building on April 3, 1989, after the customer of record, Luwana Green, failed to pay several bills. Mr. Gitten said Ms. Green had not answered warnings that power would be shut off or to offers to work out a payment plan.
On a number of occasions, Con Ed employees had tried to check the meter in the building and been refused entry.
The building's use of electricity continued, he said, and on July 6, Con Ed workers found an illegal hookup and shut power off again.
Correction:  March 1, 1991, Friday
Because of an editing error, an article on Feb. 9 about a fire in Brooklyn that killed three small children misstated the age of one victim, Jonathan Green. He was 2 years old, not 2 months.