Four kids were killed in a blaze that ripped through their family’s Teaneck, N.J. home – just hours after the fire department checked the house and gave it the all-clear.
Their mother and two sisters were rescued through a tiny second-floor bathroom window – thanks to a quick-acting nanny and a heroic neighbor.
The mother, Philyss Seidenfeld, 42, was fighting for her life last night at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, where she was in critical condition with burns covering 90 percent of her body, fire officials said.
Her surviving youngsters, daughters Aviva, 7, and Zahava, 12, were at Hackensack University Hospital, along with their nanny, Betty Mbaza, 37.
The Teaneck Fire Department had been called to the house Monday at 8:45 p.m. after family members reported smelling smoke in the basement.
But firefighters found no problems. “We spent over a half-hour checking the house. We couldn’t find anything wrong,” said Fire Chief John Bauer.
And so they left.
While the firefighters inspected the two-story brick-face Tudor house at 501 Rutland St., Philyss Seidenfeld sent three of her youngest kids – Adria, 5, Noah, 6, and Aviva, 7 – in their pajamas to a neighbor’s house.
When the firemen left, the youngsters returned home.
Less than five hours later, Adria and Noah died along with their brothers Ari, 15, and Natan, 4, when the house became engulfed in flames and thick black smoke.
Mbaza, the nanny, was sleeping on a couch in the living room when she was awakened by acrid smoke before 1:45 a.m.
“She called upstairs to the mother and the mother said she was going to get the kids,” said Bauer.
But the mom couldn’t get down the stairs. She and her kids were trapped upstairs by the flames and dense smoke, he said.
Mbaza rushed outside and called 911 on her cellphone – then went to neighbor Paul Gingras’ home for help.
Gingras grabbed a ladder from his garage and headed next door.
He heard cries coming from a tiny bathroom window, propped the ladder up against the house, and climbed up.
Seidenfeld handed two of her youngsters – Aviva and Zahava – out the window to him.
Then he climbed down and let the police, who had just arrived, take over.
When the cops tried to help Seidenfeld out through the 2-by-5-foot window, she became stuck.
“She was yelling she was stuck in the window,” said Gingras, 57.
“They had to push her back in and pull her out with the window frame,” said Deputy Fire Chief Robert Montgomery.
By the time she was pulled to safety, the four other children in the house had succumbed to the heavy smoke.
When firemen were finally able to reach the second floor, they found two of the youngsters in the bathroom, where they had been waiting to follow their mother out through the window.
The other two youngsters were found in their mother’s bedroom.
Chief Bauer said a preliminary investigation found that the fatal blaze had been caused by an overloaded circuit in the 75-year-old house.
“They have a 20-amp circuit and they had 26 amps plugged into it – they had a washer, a dryer, a refrigerator and a freezer,” he said.
“That’s the sad part,” he said. “The circuit breaker didn’t trip, even though all those things were plugged into it. Had the circuit breaker tripped, this wouldn’t have happened.”
He said the blaze started in a freezer in the basement, where an overloaded circuit caused its motor to deteriorate and burn out.
The fire and smoke raced up through the walls and spread through the house, he said.
The brick façade of the wood-frame house kept the blaze confined to the walls, where it intensified and became “a heavy smoldering fire with thick black smoke,” said Montgomery.
Family members became trapped because two large upstairs windows were blocked – one by the mother’s bed, the other by an air conditioner.
Bauer said his firefighters did a thorough inspection of the house when they were called there.
“We did everything we possibly could. We checked every electrical appliance and there was no indication anything had malfunctioned at the time.”
The children’s father, Howard Seidenfeld, spent most of the day yesterday at the hospital with his two injured youngsters.
He and his wife were divorced last year.
The oldest of their seven children, 17-year-old Helena, was in Israel visiting her grandparents when tragedy struck.
She was rushing home last night to be with her mother and two surviving sisters, and to join relatives and friends at a funeral being held today.
Her distraught grandparents, former Brooklynites Esther and Alexander Seidenfeld, remained behind in Jerusalem.
“It’s too fresh and too painful to say anything,” the heartsick grandmother told the Post.
Stunned neighbors in Philyss Seidenfeld’s close-knit Jewish community stood outside her fire-ravaged house yesterday crying openly.
“We’re all in a state of shock and grief,” said Betty Kay.
She said Philyss Seidenfeld, who was a nurse, was a caring woman who had “six children of her own and adopted another.” The adopted child, Adria, had Down syndrome.
Her ex-husband, Howard, lives in Manhattan with his girlfriend, a former family baby sitter, according to divorce records on file in Bergen County Court.
Experts said it was not surprising that firefighters found nothing at first.
“If there was no smoke, short of them taking the appliances apart and taking the house apart, they wouldn’t have found it,” said Angelo Pisani Jr., a professor at St. John’s University and a certified fire investigator.
Nonetheless, “the fire department guys were devastated . . . They would have done anything to get those kids out,” Bauer said.
Additional reporting by Uri Dan in Israel and John Doyle and Bill Sanderson in New York
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Countdown to tragedy (map)
Monday
8:45 PM: Teaneck firefighters arrive at Seidenfeld home to check for smoke.
9:15 PM: Firefighters leave after finding smoke source but not smelling smoke themselves.
9:45 PM: Philyss Seidenfeld sends oldest son to bring his siblings from neighbor’s houses.
Tuesday:
1:43 AM: Baby sitter smells smoke and calls fire department.
1:47 AM: Several calls about a fire; neighbor Paul Gingras brings a ladder to scene.
1:48 AM: Gingras pulls two girls from an upper-story window; police arrive.
1:50 AM: Rescuers, including police, help pull Philyss Seidenfeld from the window.
1:55 AM: Neighbors report seeing firefighters bring four children out the front door, and see EMS workers trying to
resuscitate them on the front lawn.