“They’re Never Coming Back”: 8 Children Among 12 Dead In US House Fire

Read Time:2 Minute, 42 Second

Jacuita Purifoy lost ten family members when the fire ripped a three-storyly converted house in Philadelphia Wednesday, killing 12 people in one of the most deadly inferno housing in the past few years.
“My brother and nephew and my niece disappeared. They never returned again,” said 37 years to AFP outside the elementary school where the families of the victims entertained each other.

The Mayor’s Office of Philadelphia said that 12 people, including eight children, were killed in the flames, revising the victims of 13 previous victims.

Purifoy lost seven younger relatives, the youngest of just one year.

Three of the Purifoy sisters also died in a fire, which occurred before sunrise in public housing in the Fairmount Museum district popular in the US East.

“I was shocked. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say,” Purifoy said.

“They are someone who should have continued to live and die because of old age, not from items that can be avoided.”

Officials said eight people escaped fire, while the other two were hospitalized, one of the five-year-old purifoy nephews.

“Everyone goes except for one child,” he said.

“He didn’t know what happened. He wants his mother, he wants his father, he wants his sister, he wants his cousin, he wants everyone he has lived for the past five years.

“He did not know what had happened, because he was still a child,” Purifoy added.

In the Bache-Martin elementary school, a block away from the disaster site, a truck Salvation Army distributed supplies to relatives.

Purifoy rubbed the back of his sister Qaadira, who was crying when he tried to keep a cold with the blanket of safety soldiers.

Near the burned building, local relaxed white rose on the ground under the police footage.

Investigation

“This is without doubt one of the most tragic days of the history of our city, the loss is so many people in a tragic way,” said Mayor Jim Kenney told Reporters on Wednesday.

Philadelphia firefight department Commissioner Craig Murphy said the fire was the worst he had seen in 35 years at work.

He added it too early to say what caused the fire, but his department was investigating.

“This is not necessarily considered suspicious, but we have all the hands on the deck because of the magnitude of this fire,” he told reporters.

“We are in the process of investigating this to the highest level we can. We combine all our resources.”

He said that there were four smoke detectors in the building, but none of them operated.

This building is owned by the Philadelphia (Pha) public housing authority, which said the last detectors were examined in May 2021 and “operate well at that time.”

“This unimaginable loss of life has shaken us all in Pha,” CEO Kelvin Jeremiah said in a statement.

The clerk found the “big fire” came from the second floor of a three-story line house when they arrived at 6:40 a.m. (1140 GMT), and took almost an hour to control it, the fire department said.

About 26 people have lived in the building, eight on the first and 18th floor on the second and third floor, according to Murphy.