At least 17 people, including eight children, died in New York City’s worst fire in more than 30 years on Sunday after a space heater malfunctioned in a Bronx apartment building.
The youngest fatalities in Sunday’s horrific Bronx blaze include a 4-year-old, two 5-year-old girls, a 6-year-old boy, a pair of 11-year-old girls and a 12-year-old boy, according to authorities.
The two 11-year-olds and one of the 5-year-olds shared the same last name, police sources told The Post.
The children still hospitalized include 7-month-old and 11-month-old girls, as well as at least eight other kids.
Fanta Barrow, 45, said she found out Sunday that her 19-year-old cousin died in the fire.
He dreamed of being a lawyer, she told The Post on Monday outside the ill-fated building.
“It’s not easy,” Barrow said, unable to hold her composure and fighting back tears.
“He was a tall guy, very beautiful guy,” she said, offering only the phonetic spelling of the young man’s name. “He was lovely. He liked everybody. He was in school right now. I was talking to him, he said, ‘Auntie, I want to be a lawyer.’ I said, ‘Oh, you have to make money. … I just pray for you.’”
The city has yet to release the names of the dead — and scores of relatives of missing potential victims are still desperately trying to learn their fate.
Yusupha Jawara has been frantically searching for his brother and sister-in-law.
“I’ve been looking for my brother and his wife since yesterday. Nobody’s telling me anything,” he lamented to The Post on Monday. “They keep telling me to call 311, I call 311, they don’t have anything to tell me.
Dorel Anderson and her boyfriend Ramel Thompson were both in the apartment building during the fire and are still missing.
“My family needs closure, at least. I was in the emergency room yesterday since 12, nobody’s giving me any information. Why are they keeping the information from us?”
The family of wheelchair-bound Dorel Anderson is in the same boat.
Anderson, 38, was visiting her boyfriend, Ramel Thompson, 44, in apartment 13R in the building at the time of the fire, according to her family.
The missing woman has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair since she can’t walk, kin said. Thompson’s parents lived on the 17th floor and were able to make it out safely. Anderson’s boyfriend also is still missing.
“We were given no information. We can’t find her,” said Anderson’s mom, Karen Benjamin.
One of Anderson’s sisters, April Stevens, said neither the NYPD nor the Red Cross have information on the missing woman, who lives in Brooklyn with her 85-year-old grandmother, who has cancer.
The family said they went to Jacobi Hospital on Sunday night looking for her, to no avail.
Julie Bolcer, a rep for the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, told The Post on Monday that the ME currently has 17 decedents from the fire in Bronx and Manhattan morgues.
Anderson, who has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair, was visiting Thompson at the time of the fire.
The victims are being identified virtually to make the process less burdensome for the families during such difficult times, ME officials said.
“We are working with families to make identifications,” Bolcer said.
The city said it is working with the Red Cross and has set up a victim identification system where people can call 311 to report missing loved ones and help identify bodies.