Fifty-nine people routed all safe and sound
With four simple words, Natalie Fonville described the apocalyptic terror her family faced 10 days ago.
"It was raining fire," she said.
The torrential embers were being scattered by 50-mph gusts from a vacant building across South 14th Street in Newark. It was 3:30 in the morning and the temperature outside was 5 degrees. Not wind-chill. Wind still. Between the gusts and the cold, it was life-threatening.
Some of the residents in the half-dozen row homes across the street from the burning building were awakened by sirens. Same for the people in the apartment building on 9th Avenue behind the row homes. The fire was spreading quickly and with a hellish violence that destroyed all the buildings it touched and left 59 people homeless.
MORE: Recent Mark Di Ionno columns
What follows is a story about a city that works.
Newark, long-plagued by deficits that cut essential services, proved on the night of the fire it had entered a new era of competency.
Roads that would once be snow-bound for weeks, were plowed, allowing emergency vehicles to respond unobstructed.
Fire department manpower, bolstered by a new class of 68 recruits, was muscular enough to put 120 firefighters at the scene, containing what could have a wind-whipped conflagration that would have consumed several city blocks.
And where once the people routed by the fire would have been sheltered in makeshift dormitories by the Red Cross, the city put them up in a hotel and, less than three days after the fire, all were in somewhat permanent housing.
Credit the Mayor Ras Baraka administration.
"Things are definitely better," said Newark Fire Chief Rufus Jackson, who came up through the ranks, and was made chief by city Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose, a Baraka appointee.
While Jackson's job was to put out the fire, it was Newark Health Department chief Mark Wade's job to get the victims sheltered.
All 59 people who were displaced were into more permanent housing by Monday. After three days at the Robert Treat Hotel, they were moved to the John F. Kennedy Community Center Monday morning. None had to stay the night.
"The mayor's people found us an apartment," said Tony Fonville, Natalie's husband.
For Jackson and Wade, a pediatrician whose resume includes creating his own health care system and humanitarian agency, the catastrophe was a literal baptism by fire. Jackson has been chief for a year and Wade, also appointed by Baraka, has been in his job for eight months.
"I think we have the right people in place to be ready not only for the day-to-day problems, but these kind of events," Baraka said.
When the fire started, residents such as the Fonvilles and their children had time to grab nothing but their coats. The family tried to go out the front door, but it was already on fire.
"We went out the back and we had to climb two fences," Natalie Fonville said. "The first one was easy. The second one was higher."
Beyond the second fence in the densely packed neighborhood, the apartment building roof was already on fire. If the family hadn't escaped, they would have been trapped by fire on both sides.
The fire department's quick response allowed all the residents in the row homes and the apartment building to escape. Only two firefighters from the 19 trucks that responded were injured, both from slipping on ice.
That, itself, is a miracle.
A second miracle is that by 5:30 a.m., all the residents were somewhere warm. Thirty went to stay with relatives. The rest were taken to the hotel.
"Mayor (Ras) Baraka really stepped up for us," Fonville said. "We were in a Red Cross truck with nowhere to go."
If the fire - which is still under investigation -- was an isolated incident, the response would have been impressive. But taken in the context of the night of Jan. 4 and the early morning hours of Jan. 5, the way things worked out was remarkable.
First, the weather. It was first few days of the Arctic blast that kept nighttime temperatures in the single digits.
The night of the fire, the wind reached gale-force levels. Blowing west to east, it blasted down from the Watchung Mountains through the high ridges of the city.
When it began to "rain fire," the embers were flying horizontally, swept by gusts onto surrounding buildings.
In December, the city opened what Wade called a new "winter shelter" of 200 additional beds at the city's Sussex Avenue homeless shelter. With the cold wave, the health department made rounds at Penn Station, Military Park and other places the homeless go the day of the fire, to get them inside and safe.
"We brought 200 unsheltered people to safety even before the fire," Wade said.
Second, the South 14th Street fire was the third major fire of the night.
Around midnight, an unoccupied building Milford Avenue, on the other side of town, broke out, and at the same time of the South 14th Street fire, a vacant building on Vanderpool Street went up.
"We were stretched pretty thin," Jackson said. "But we prepare for these things. We move resources around pretty good."
Those resources were bolstered by Baraka; the 68 new firefighters sworn in October were the largest class in Newark history.
In addition to the 120 firefighters at South 14th Street, Jackson said there were 95 at Milford Avenue and 65 at Vanderpool Street. Despite the wind and weather, the other two fires didn't spread.
"Our response time was very, very good," Jackson said.
Baraka, who was at the scene, applauded the city workers and volunteers "who stepped up big-time."
"It was a horrible event," Baraka said. "These people lost everything, all their belongings. All their pictures, their family histories.
"But our people stood out there with them, got them to safety, got them clothes, food, and a place to live. These are the most essential services and we did a good job providing them."
And that helped ease the pain of Clarice Phillips, 76.
She grew up in her rowhome on South 14th Street, which was bought by her parents in 1954. She is now living with her son in Newark.
"This is such a nice little neighborhood," she said with tears in her eyes. "And now it's all gone. It looks like a war zone. It's surreal.
"But the city, they've been phenomenal. They've been in constant contact with me to see that I'm okay."
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.
