By Michael O. Allen and Laura Impellizzeri, Record Staff Writers | Wednesday, June 12, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | Three Star P | NEWS | Page A18
After being driven back twice by heavy smoke and intense heat, a disoriented William McClain could do nothing but scream for help as a raging fire destroyed his home and family early Tuesday.
Four members of the family the mother, a daughter, and two sons died in the two second-floor bedrooms as a result of the 12:30 a.m. blaze at 86 Haring St. in Bergenfield.
The youngest child, Patrick, 7, was in “extremely critical condition” Tuesday evening at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Paterson, Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy said.
Firefighters found Lelia McClain, 39, unconscious in bed upstairs in the master bedroom. Katie, 9, was found unconscious on the floor in that room. The mother died at 5:30 a.m. at Hackensack Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said. Katie was admitted to Englewood Hospital in critical condition, and died before dawn.
The two oldest sons William “Billy” McClain, 16, and Brian, 13 were found, with Patrick, huddled in the northwest corner of their bedroom, said Lt. Robert Kops, chief of the prosecutor’s arson investigation unit. They were dead on arrival at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck.
Kops said the fire started in the kitchen, in the southwest corner of the house, spread into the dining and living rooms, and sent a thick wall of smoke and intense heat up the stairs. The heat and a black haze apparently prevented the father from crossing the tiny upstairs hallway to the children’s bedroom when he heard one of them yell “fire,” Fahy said.
The house was gutted. Tuesday afternoon, its powder-blue siding, though melted and bent around the charred kitchen window, was still mostly intact, hiding the devastation within.
Bergenfield Deputy Fire Chief Edward Kneisler said there was no smoke detector in the 75-year-old house, where the McClains had lived since 1977. The alarms are not required.
“When we got there it was fully involved,” he said. “A $20 smoke detector in this house and it might have saved someone’s life.”
Kneisler said about 30 Bergenfield firefighters, with standby support from Dumont, Closter, and Tenafly, extinguished the blaze in about 30 minutes.
Bergenfield Police Officer Pete Murphy said he was in the area about 12:35 a.m. Tuesday on an unrelated investigation when he heard someone screaming.
Murphy said that when he turned the corner at West Clinton Avenue onto Haring Street, black smoke blanketed the whole block. He found McClain, 39, sitting on the first-floor porch’s roof, which forms a sloped ledge outside his bedroom window, screaming that his family was trapped inside. Murphy said he could not talk him into jumping from the roof.
Murphy and Bergenfield Police Officer Owen M. Rynn, who is also a volunteer firefighter, tried to go into the house.
“We kicked in the front door,” Murphy said. “We got into the living room, about halfway through, but the smoke was too thick and the heat.”
“We came out and it went up,” said Rynn. He could see flames in the kitchen as he crawled several feet into the living room beneath the acrid, knee-level smoke.
Neighbors Peter Field, 23, and Matt Gelis, 21, rushed over with a ladder when they heard McClain shouting, and saw smoke billowing out of the house.
“The father was on the roof and my first reaction was to grab the ladder and help him down,” said Gelis, who has known the family since the younger children were babies.
“It’s horrifying,” Gelis said. “You’re just sitting there, and you can’t get in the house and you’re just waiting for firefighters.”
The police helped McClain from the roof. Field and Gelis brother Jason ran to the back of the house yelling the children’s names, but got no answer, the youths said. The police officers then climbed the ladder and tried to go into the master bedroom, but were again beaten back by the heat. Seconds later, firefighters arrived.
Murphy said McClain was suffering from shock and smoke inhalation and appeared to be “completely devastated.”
“I don’t know how this guy is going to make it,” Murphy said.
Fahy said the cause of the fire was not determined, but it did not appear suspicious. Neighbors said a planned two-room, one-story addition on the back of the house was nearing completion; Fahy said the work was not a factor in the fire.
Volunteer Bergenfield firefighter Jack DeLucia, who drove the ladder truck that put out the blaze, returned to the scene about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, still shaken by the experience.
“If somebody could have seen the fire 10 minutes earlier,” DeLucia said. “It’s been said many times before, but smoke alarms, smoke alarms.”
Bergenfield Mayor Robert Gallione said the borough follows the state building code, which does not require that single-family dwellings have smoke detectors. The building department, however, began looking at ways to strengthen the codes earlier this year, he said.
“We will be getting a report regarding changes to be made,” Gallione said. “Any opportunity that we get to save just one life, we will take the appropriate action. We have relied on public education and voluntary compliance, with smoke suppression and smoke detection devices.
Record Staff Writers Tom Toolen and Linda Voorhis contributed to this article.
Keywords: FIRE; DEATH; VICTIM; BERGENFIELD; FAMILY
Caption: PHOTO – JOHN DECKER / THE RECORD – A shocked neighbor looking at house where four family members died.
Notes: 2 of 2 versions
ID: 17346205 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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