Sam Amico
Three children are in serious condition after a fire raged across two buildings in Brooklyn, New York on Sunday.
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The father of the three children — identified as two girls, ages 8 and 5, and a boy, age 4 — had left them alone in an 11th-story apartment, FDNY Fire Department Chief John Hodgens said, via the New York Daily News.
Hodgens added that rescuers had to crawl through smoke in the apartment to save the kids and tried to resuscitate them before paramedics performed more advanced life-saving measures.
“They had to go to work quickly, get them out, and get them over to EMS and paramedics,” Hodgens said. “That’s why they’re alive today.”
It reportedly took the rescuers just 12 minutes to scale the building and pull out the children.
Police arrested the children’s father, Anthony Halliburton, 37, the Daily News reported, citing a neighbor who said the mother had left the children with their dad when she went to work. Halliburton went out for food, leaving the kids alone in the apartment, the neighbor added.
Ten firefighters were injured while battling the blaze, which broke out in a commercial building on Lee Ave. near Williamsburg St. East shortly before noon, Hodgens said.
He added that the fire spread “through an attic shared by nine small businesses, including a chocolate shop and grill, all of which were damaged in the blaze,” per the Daily News.
No one else was injured beyond the children and the firefighters.
“We had to force our way into every store,” Hodgens said. “Nine stores — all had closed gates.”
