BY WALTER ELLIOTT
ORANGE – A pair of multi-alarm fires here and in Newark four days apart are reminders that the year end holiday season and advent of winter weather comes with fire safety and heating care.
Two sisters were killed here on Nov. 27 – Thanksgiving Day night – when they tried to rescue their wheelchair father. The father and five other family members survived.
Although no injuries were reported in the three-building Dec. 1 fire in Newark’s Central Ward, 51 people from 14 families received temporary shelter after their two buildings were damaged.
A GoFundMe.com page was established and municipal donations started for the survivors of Frantzia and Pojanee Fluery. F. Fluery, 49, and P. Fluery, 42, were said to have gone back into the family house in the South Ward to save their wheelchair-bound father.
Essex County Prosecutor Theodore N. “Ted” Stephens and Orange Fire Chief Derrick Brown said that the first alarm for 660 Mosswood Ave. was pulled at about 5 p.m. Brown said that the first OFD units arrived to find flames coming from the second of the house’s 2.5 floors.
The on scene incident commander pulled two more alarms for all OFD hands and mutual aid to help combat the fast moving fire. Bloomfield, for example, sent one unit to the scene.
It is presumed that NJTransit’s hourly No. 44 Tremont Avenue buses were among the detoured traffic. NJTransit supplied a bus from their Orange Garage as a warming center. The father, said a relative, was taken to a local hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation.
The sisters’ bodies were found and declared dead at the scene at 6:47 p.m. The city’s building inspector declared the house uninhabitable.
The American Red Cross, of Fairfield, has provided 72 hours of temporary housing, clothing and food. ECPO Arson Squad investigators, in a standard operating procedure, are probing for the fire’s cause.
Red Cross volunteers supplied similar services to the 14 families who were displaced by a fire at 286-90 14th Avenue Dec. 1.
Newark Public Safety Director Emanuel Miranda said that city firefighters first responded to a fire call from 286 14th Ave. at 6:18 a.m. Sunday. Flames were coming from what neighbors said was a vacant building – and were spreading to the house at 288 14th and apartment building at 290 14th.
The on scene incident commander pulled two more alarms that drew up to 110 Newark firefighters to the scene. The city provided buses as warming centers.
The fire was brought under control by 7:32 a.m.
Public Safety Department Arson Squad detectives, as per procedure, are looking for the fire’s cause.
Two people were killed and between 72 and 91 people were rendered homeless by a Nov. 30 1 a.m. fire at 308 W. Front St., Plainfield.
