Fire claims another child

Meandering and sniffing at piles of charred rubble outside a fire-ravaged Point Breeze rowhome, a small white cat looked lost and hungry.

Neighbors said the feline, with tan and gray patches, belonged to the family next door whose home was the scene of a fatal fire earlier that morning.

Monique Drayton, 12, died in the blaze at 1603 Wharton St. that also injured her five siblings and her mother, Frances Drayton.

Monique was the 10th child fire fatality in the city since mid-May.

Willie Williams and his wife, Patricia, who’ve lived on the block for 20 years, were awakened at about 5 a.m. by a noise next door and saw flames outside their third-floor bedroom window.

"I still feel bad – my whole insides. It knots you all up. Fire is never a good thing," said the woman hours after the smoke had cleared.

With help from neighbors and firefighters, Frances Drayton and five of her six children were able to escape the burning home. A seventh child, a 7-year-old girl, had spent the night at a friend’s house and was not home at the time of the blaze.

Drayton and her children were badly injured, but her eldest daughter did not make it out alive.

Firefighters found Monique dead in a second-floor bathroom, where the fire originated, said Fire Lt. Michael Grant.

The medical examiner said the girl died of soot and smoke inhalation and thermal burns.

Her mother, who suffered second-degree burns to more than 18 percent of her body, was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital then Temple University Hospital, said the lieutenant. Temple University couldn’t be reached for comment by press time. Her 5-month-old daughter suffered second-degree burns to her face and abdomen; two sons, ages 2 and 5, were in stable condition with smoke inhalation and two daughters, ages 9 and 11, were in critical condition with the same injuries.

All of the children were taken to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Due to HIPP laws, a CHOP spokesperson could not release information on the children.

The cause of the blaze was still being investigated at press time.

According to the fire lieutenant, the dwelling had one working smoke detector in the basement and another on a stairwell between the first and second floor, but that one didn’t have a battery.

Firefighters from Engine 10 and Ladder 11, at 12th and Reed streets, arrived to find the family trapped inside the home by heavy fire.

Charles Nichols, who lives in back of the victim’s home on 16th Street, was watching the news when light flooded his livingroo

Nichols yelled for his partner, Charlene Ryant, who was upstairs at the time. Ryant looked out of her second-floor bedroom window and saw flames shooting out of the home on Wharton Street. Ryant said she saw Drayton, along with her 5-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son, in their backyard yelling for her 5-year-old son to jump from a second-floor window.

Moments later, Ryant and a male neighbor arrived to help the frantic mother. The man stood on a fence and grabbed the boy’s feet, while Ryant used a pipe to knock away a piece of wood near the window to aid the child’s exit.

"I just wanted to get those babies out," she said.

Drayton escaped wearing nothing but a blue blanket. Neighbor Nieta Hatten’s daughter, Audra, gaveDrayton a pair of shorts, while another neighbor gave her a T-shirt.

The mother appeared to be in shock, Hatten said.

"She just kept sitting there saying, ‘I think my babies are inside, I think my babies are inside,’" Hatten said.

A devout Baptist, Hatten said she and her daughter held hands and prayed with the victims and neighbors.

"I just prayed to the Father to heal their bodies and give this mother comfort at this time of tragedy," she said.

The injured mother refused hospital treatment until all of her children were rescued.

The blaze was under control at 5:36 a.m. There were no injuries to firefighters, but one who recently returned from Iraq will undergo "stress debriefing," Grant said.

Meanwhile, firefighters are feeling the effects of a year in which, so far, 12 children and 35 adults have died, said the lieutenant. The numbers are more than double the total of 19 fatalities last year at this time.

"This is an unexplained spike in the numbers. We’re racking our brains trying to figure it all out," the fire lieutenant said.

Many of the homes in which people died did not have working smoke alarms, Grant added. Firefighters are urging residents to put smoke alarms on every floor of a house, if possible, and check batteries often. Practicing a home escape plan is also of the utmost importance, as is sleeping with a bedroom door closed, said Grant. If a fire breaks out, a closed door will prevent smoke from flooding the room; most people die from smoke inhalation, not burns, said the lieutenant.

Every time there is a fatal fire in the city, the responding fire units, in this case, Engine 10 and Ladder 11, return to the block later that day to distribute fire prevention material and hand out free smoke alarms.