Only a woman and her small grandson escaped the 7:30 a.m. inferno on Haverford Avenue near 32nd Street in the Mantua section. The woman, June Scott, was questioned by Ulshafer and city Managing Director James S. White, and later stood in her bathrobe, sobbing, on a neighbor's porch when an assistant fire marshal told her of the deaths.
"I lost half my family. That's all I have to say. All I know is, I lost my baby," she sobbed.
Identities of the victims were not immediately released, but accusations on both sides were quickly forthcoming.
"All I know is, it took the Fire Department a long time to get here," said Louise Smith, who lives in the same block.
"It seems like it took a long time for them to get there," said Diane Elliott, 29, who also lives on the block.
An angry, dejected Ulshafer, however, blamed the deaths on slow reporting by neighbors and the lack of smoke detectors.
"We have a firehouse two blocks up the street. They got here in two minutes . . . It doesn't look like there were smoke detectors. It's a routine fire that was not reported right away," he said.
"It's the same thing, over and over again. Ninety-five percent of the fire deaths occur in residential properties that do not have smoke detectors," Ulshafer said.
The building's owner, Haywood Hatchett, 67, who lives in the next block, said: "There were heat sensors in every room in the house that was hooked up to the electrical system and set off a burglar alarm." Ulshafer countered there was no evidence of any anti-fire system in the gutted remains of the house.
Scott said the children were getting ready for school when she came downstairs and "saw the blazing coming up and out of the closet. I took a coat and tried to stop it, but it just kept going. It even melted the plastic door. I just don't know what happened."
