A father who escaped a burning apartment building in Massachusetts was killed after he doubled back into the blaze to rescue his young son and daughter — both of whom also perished in the flames, relatives and fire officials said.
The man — a truck driver who immigrated from Somalia in 2005 — had returned home from work just a few hours before the fire erupted in a four-story building early Sunday in Springfield, his nephew, Omar Hussein, told the Boston Globe.
“I feel bad,” Hussein told the newspaper hours later, still in shock. “I feel bad.”
The victims were not immediately identified.
Omar Abdi, a family friend who spoke to the man’s wife, said the unidentified father re-entered the smoke-choked building after making it outside and realizing two of his three children — a son and daughter both under 5 — weren’t there. His wife and the couple’s third child managed to survive.
Fire officials said the building didn’t have sprinklers and it wasn’t clear if smoke detectors inside the apartment units were working. A man, a pregnant woman and a child were also injured when they jumped from a second-story window before firefighters responded to the scene, Springfield Fire Department spokesman Dennis Leger told the newspaper.
The condition of the woman — who is four months pregnant — was unclear later Sunday, but she is expected to survive, along with four others who were injured, Springfield Fire Commissioner Bernard Calvi told reporters.
Abdi said the wife of the man who died is also hospitalized.
“She’s not feeling good, but she’s alive,” Abdi told the newspaper.
Witnesses, meanwhile, said they saw a fast-moving blaze that quickly engulfed the building’s second and third floors.
“First it was smoke, and then it was just like … fire,” Jermaine Watt said. “You could tell that it was starting to spread because it started to come out of the other side of the building. You could tell it was catching.”
Watt, who lives across the street, started taking video of the chaotic scene as residents began jumping. His footage captured one person leaping from a third-floor apartment as screams are heard in the background, the Globe reports.
Another neighbor, Ashley Fournier, saw two people leap from the burning building, which was engulfed by flames “within minutes,” she said.
In all, the fire displaced about 80 people in the building, where many tenants were Somalian, according to Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno.
“Many times when there are cultural differences, sometimes, people might not adhere to the smoke detectors’ alarms going off,” he told the Globe. “It’s a tragic situation.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, MassLive.com reports. Investigators believe 20-mph winds and temperatures in the teens caused the flames to spread quickly throughout the 20-unit building.
“This is a terrible, terrible thing,” Sarno said. “My thought and prayers are with the families who have gone through this.”
