NEW YORK (AP) – The caskets were brought one by one – all 15 of them – on a frigid winter day, as hundreds of mourners filled a Bronx mosque Sunday to bid farewell to those who died exactly a week ago trying to escape their smoke-filled apartment building.
Many hundreds more huddled outside, peering into the mosque’s windows or watching on big-screen televisions, to pay their respects after New York City’s deadliest fire in three decades.
“One week they were with us … now they’re gone,” said Musa Kabba, the imam at the Masjid-Ur-Rahmah mosque, where many of the deceased had prayed. “Last Sunday it happened, and today we are about to bury these families. It is hard.”
In all, 17 people died in the fire, which authorities said was sparked by a faulty space heater in a third-floor apartment. Among the dead were eight children as young as 2, whose tiny caskets underscored the day’s loss.
All of those who lost their lives collapsed and were overcome by smoke while trying to descend the building’s stairwell.