Highbridge Fire

Highbridge Fire

A short walk from the site of Trap’s shooting, the hill above Yankee Stadium rises into the neighborhood of Highbridge. Late at night on March 8th, the space heater chord in the basement of an old single-family home on Woodycrest Avenue set the building ablaze. Twenty-two Malian immigrants (seventeen children) lived in the building and although there were fire detectors on every floor, their batteries had died. By the time the flames reached the upper levels, it was too late for many of those inside to escape. Mothers threw their children out windows in a desperate attempt to save them from the smoldering building. Most of the kids were caught, but some were not. In the end, either window escape attempts or smoke inhalation killed eight young children and one mother.

The remnants of the burned building on 164th and Woodycrest, the Bronx.

The makeshift memorial for the Highbridge fire victims was immense. It spanned the entire block. Poster boards and notes were put up on a long fence and every person on the street stopped for at least a few minutes to read the messages.

Signs were covered in small notes such as “allah bless you,” “rest in peace angels,” and “may God cradle you.”

At the end of the fence in front of a bodega, a huge collection of candles and stuffed animals grew every day. I was told by numerous reporters and photographers that this was the largest such “shrine” they had ever seen.

Highbridge fire victims makeshift memorial.

Of course the Highbridge fire tragedy is quite unlike those of Trap and Sean. Although Mayor Bloomberg has been criticized for not rescheduling his trip to Miami in order to support the neighborhood’s grieving, the entire city has come together to raise money for the victims’ families. $200,000 has been raised by mostly by working-class Malians and other Muslims across the city to support the victims’ families and help send some of the bodies back to Mali for burial. $26,000, mostly in small donations, was raised in Highbridge alone. The owner of the Yankees donated $300,000 to the families and a Jewish rabbi who lives nearby has pledged to pay for the construction of a new home for the families. By no measure has the community needed to shout to be heard.