SEATTLE –  Two communities are mourning the loss of four children and a mother who died in an apartment fire Saturday morning.

While neighbors placed flowers in front of the Fremont home, Seattle’s close-knit East African community gathered by the hundreds in and around the Tigray Community Center to pay their respects and comfort relatives of the victims.

Family members tell KING-5 print partner The Seattle Times three siblings were caught in the fire — Yaseen Shamam, 5; Nisreen Shamam, 6; and Joseph Gebregiorgis, 13 – along with their aunt Eyerusalem Gebregiorgis, 22, and her daughter, Nyella Smith, 7, according to Daniel Gebregiorgis.  Officials say they are all of Eritrean descent.

Among those gathered at the Tigray Center was Mayor Mike McGinn, who spent the day meeting with relatives, with a firefighter who sustained minor injuries responding to the fire, and with community leaders.

“What I told them is, their grief is Seattle’s grief tonight,” he said. “I think we all understand how it feels to lose loved ones, or can imagine what it would be like to lose children, so it’s a tragic, tragic incident.”

The fire was reported just after 10 a.m. Saturday in a two-story townhouse on the 300 block of NW 41st Street. The fire started inside a second floor unit and burned quickly.

A woman and a 5-year-old girl were able to escape.

“She was screaming, handed me the kid, I dialed 911,” said Sherry Woodford. She held that little girl and kept her safe.

“Beautiful kids. I just feel so bad for that woman. That’s when I broke down. I had to tell the other woman … she said ‘where are my other kids?’ I said, you have one, I don’t know what to say to a woman, being a mother, telling her her other child may not make it, but you have one. What do you do?” she said.

One woman said her friends tried to get in with a hose but the smoke was too thick.

“I feel so bad I just don’t know what to do, my soul is broken, I watched them burn in front of my eyes,” she said.

Two women and a man, relatives of the victims, were so distraught they were taken to Harborview Medical Center.

Some witnesses expressed frustration over the fire response.

Chief Gregory Dean said the call came in at 10:04 a.m. and the first engine arrived at 10:09, the second at 10:11 and the third at 10:12.

“The first engine had a transmission problem, they were unable to get water,” he said. “By the time they realized that, the second company was here, they took their line off that company and went in.”

Dean said they will be looking at the incidents that happened during the response to the fire.

The fire did not spread to any other units. The cause is not yet known. The Fire Department said the unit did have smoke alarms, which sounded.

Neighbors said there was a fire that killed a dog in the same unit two years ago.  Seattle Fire incident reports indicate a full fire response to the apartment on the night of March 14, 2008.

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King 5

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