An unthinkable scene of horror unfolded in Upper Manhattan late Wednesday night. A raging inferno ripped through an apartment building, leaving four young children badly injured and fighting for their lives.
It was just minutes before 11 p.m. when the flames first began licking up the sides of the 11-story building on Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights. Thick, noxious smoke quickly began pouring from the windows as residents scrambled.
Within minutes, the entire upper floors were an apocalyptic vision, engulfed in an unholy blanket of searing orange flames and whirling, blinding smoke. The desperate screams of trapped residents echoed through the streets as the hellish blaze raged unchecked.
The first firefighters began arriving in a blaze of sirens and flashing lights. They wasted no time mounting a furious counterattack, extending truck-mounted ladders to the scorching windows. Hoses rained water down onto the infernal furnace as crews raced inside.
But for some, it was already too late. Two little boys, just babies of one and two years old, were pulled from the blood-curdling Scene at Death’s Door. Their tiny bodies horribly burned and broken, they clung to life by a thread, rushed in a wail of sirens to the burn unit’s expert care.
Two other children, 9-year-old girls, miraculously survived with “only” life-threatening smoke inhalation injuries. And a 29-year-old mother, her lungs likely seared by the toxic fumes, joined them in being raced away by paramedics.
After an outrageous, desperate hour, the frenzied firefighters finally regained control, quelling the voracious beast and reducing it to haunting, smoldering ruins. But in its wake lay a trail of unimaginable devastation and the precious lives of innocents hanging by a hellish thread.
