Harlem Community Mourns Family Killed In Fire

HARLEM, NY — Harlem community members gathered Wednesday night at the site of a deadly fire that killed a family of six, including four young children, to remember those who were lost.

Andrea Pollidore, 45, her children Nakiyra, 11, Andre, 8, Brooklyn, 6, and Elijah, 3 and brother Matt Abdularaph, 32, were pronounced dead after firefighters extinguished a blaze in their fifth-floor apartment home in a Frederick E. Samuel Apartments building on the corner of West 142nd Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., police said.

Raven Reyes, the 27-year-old daughter of Pollidore, said during Wednesday's vigil that her mother endured hardships in life but kept pushing toward her goal of becoming a nurse.

"This wasn't even her first fire to really be exact. She beat that, she lost her memory, she was in a coma, she fought to remember her kids, get an education and graduate from college," Reyes said Wednesday.

Reyes said that thinking of her younger siblings Wednesday brought her both joy and sadness. Naikyra was "so smart" with dreams of becoming a doctor or teacher, Andre wanted to play ball or dance, Brooklyn was a "princess" who would don dresses and go to the park and Elijah loved to eat honey buns.

"It's tragic. Just to think about them, it makes me smile and it makes me sad at the same time," Reyes said.

After community members spoke about the family on Wednesday they lite candles and released balloons that floated past the burnt-out windows of the family's fifth-floor apartment. The vigil was organized by Al Sharpton's National Action Network. The organization is planning to raise money to cover the cost of burying the six family members who died Wednesday, spokesman William Allen said Wednesday. Allen warned against donating to potential online scams that claim to be raising money for the family.

Harlem resident Iesha Sekou, the founder of anti-violence organization Street Corner Resources, said that the Harlem community will come together to help Pollidore's family.

"In this community when something happens we come together. We don't have to know each other, we don't have to know each others names. We don't have to have ever been in the church, Sekou said Wednesday.

Wednesday's fire broke out around 1:40 a.m. and took about 100 firefighters nearly two hours to control, fire officials said. Firefighters discovered the victims in the apartment's rear bedrooms after they were able to extinguish the blaze, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said

"The fire met [firefighters] at the front door of the apartment, it is a particularly large apartment with 3 bedrooms, living room, kitchen, dining room, every bit of that apartment had fire damage," FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said during a press conference Wednesday morning.

Preliminary investigations indicate that the fire was an accident sparked by an unattended stove, Nigro said. The apartment's kitchen is located near the front door, which prevented the family for exiting the apartment and made it difficult for firefighters to enter the home, fire officials said. The quick-moving fire also prevented family members from accessing the fire escape, which was located on the opposite side of the apartment from the bedrooms, Nigro said.

The building where the fire broke out is part of the Frederick E. Samuel Apartments development run by the New York City Housing Authority. More than 1,400 people live in the 40-building development, which is made up of low-rise apartment buildings in the West 140s.

A NYCHA worker tested the apartment's smoke detector during an unrelated maintenance call in January, Interim NYCHA Chair Kathryn Garcia said Wednesday. It's NYCHA policy to test smoke detectors any time a maintenance worker is inside a unit, Garcia said. The apartment's was installed in 2017.