Summary: Victims of the devastating Bronx fire are suing the city for negligence.
Eleven victims of the December Bronx fire are suing New York City for $110 million. The plaintiffs claim that the city is responsible for the tragedy because they should have taken the toddler who started the fire from his mother’s home long before the accident.
“The mother of said child was a person known to the authorities and to the Administration for Child Services Department for not watching and taking care of her child,” the court filings stated.
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday, according to the New York Daily News. The eleven victims of the blaze said that the city failed to keep track of the problems inside the doomed Bronx apartment building.
On December 28, a three-year-old with a history of playing with fire was messing around with the kitchen stove burner. When a fire erupted, his mother grabbed the boy and his siblings and rushed out of the apartment, leaving the door open. The kitchen fire soon spread, and the apartment flames eventually killed 13 people and injured others.
In the recent lawsuit, the plaintiffs said that if the Administration for Children’s Services had removed the child from his negligent mother’s home then the “fire would not have occurred.” In addition to suing the city, they named the FDNY, the city Housing Preservation and Development department, and ACS as defendants.
In addition to blaming ACS for not removing the boy, the plaintiffs said that the city should have ensured the nearby fire hydrants weren’t frozen in the winter cold and that the smoke detectors inside the building worked. Additionally, they claimed that the fire escapes were not functioning properly.
Attorney Robert Vilensky is representing the victims of the fire. He said that his clients saw ACS visit the mother of the toddler in the past, and they said that if ACS had done their job, they would have seen she was not good at monitoring her son.
“They were well aware that the mother might not have been the greatest mother in terms of watching that child,” Vilensky said to New York Daily News. “If ACS was involved, then they didn’t do the greatest job in the world in protecting that child.”
The Bronx fire was known as one of the worst fires in the city’s history. Last week, hundreds gathered for the funeral of five victims, and since the blaze, firefighters and charity workers have been offering fire safety education to locals.
“If everything was working, there wouldn’t be 13 deaths. Nobody can tell me a 3-year-old is responsible for this fire. “Oh my God, Jesus!” a relative of the victims, Andrene Paul, told the New York Daily News.
Source: New York Daily News