Janet Ayala-Vázquez
The Pinter Hotel Fire
View Footnote
This portrait of Janet was made while we listened to an edited recording of conversations we had together over the course of several months. She asked to have her children listen to the recording later that evening as she had never before been able to articulate so vividly what she had endured.
My name is Janet Ayala and I am a 57 year old mother of five grown children and ten grand children including a grandson who passed away from chronic kidney disease. I have lived in Central Florida for twenty-three years now with my husband, Jose, of thirty-three years. I am grateful that life has bestowed me the safety and the presence of all of my children. They are all here with me in Florida and are largely responsible for my salvation. I know first hand what it is to lose a family. To grieve endlessly for my family lost to violence.
On April 31st, 1982 I survived the Pinter Hotel arson fire in Hoboken, New Jersey. On this day my life changed forever as I watched the destruction of what change meant to the city. It meant that I needed to go in order for already well off people to be in my place. I lost my entire family in the fire that day including my mother, who had already survived two previous fires, my stepfather, brother, and nephew. I say that I lost my entire family because the ones that survived were unable to cope with the death of our mother who was the trunk of our family. In this devastating moment we essentially lost 3 generations of our lineage. In total 13 people died that day. All families who were loved like my own. The news media deemed it HELL ON 14TH STREET, a fitting title as the last 40 years of my life have felt like just that, an inescapable hell that ONLY this sort of trauma can bring.
After the fire I was left with nothing, with no aid from the city and found myself with my first born, who as a result incurred long standing respiratory issues, and siblings begging for money on the street just so we could afford to bury our family. My husband at the time, who had never used hard substances before the fire, fell victim to drugs which had then cost him his job and eventually his life. As well, my sister and brother found themselves lost to substance abuse as a result of losing our mother. I found myself in a women’s shelter with my girls and was at the time suffering from such trauma. There, I would often wake up in the middle of the night screaming that the building was burning and couldn’t rest until the building was checked from top to bottom. The stress was so severe that I had stopped eating and I didn’t even know that I was pregnant due to extreme weight loss and malnourishment as a result of this trauma. The doctors gave very little hope that I would be able to have the child but I kept on going and today she is healthy and I call him my miracle child.
Today, as a result of the fire, I continue to experience PTSD, anxiety, depression, and along list of medical ailments that I fight against daily. At one point, when I had returned to New Jersey after many years, the place had retriggered my trauma to the point where I considered suicide. It was only when I saw my children’s belongings that I had stopped myself as I couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning my them.I consider myself a survivor but know that I can’t do it alone. Over these past 40 years not a day has passed that I don’t think of my mother and my family that I lost asking myself how could this happen? This year I finally took the leap to bring closure to this painful history of my life by trying to seek out the final resting places of my deceased family. No one ever told me where they were buried. At great financial expense I traveled to Puerto Rico to find their graves and was only able to find the sites of my mother and stepfather. By working with the records department and the local municipality I found them in an unmarked grave. This was a terribly painful thing to see and know that like so many other people who lost their lives to the gentrification of the city mine, like theirs, remains nameless.
I am asking for your support today in assistance with bringing closure to this painful part of my life so that I may close this chapter and move onto the next. Your support will allow me to Lay my family to rest honorably and restore my family’s legacy that was lost. I will need assistance with travel expenses to find the final resting places of my brother and nephew who remain missing and to have tombstones made for them, my mother and stepfather. As well, any additional money will go towards my mothers childhood home in Naguabo, Puerto Rico, a place that has deteriorated from neglect and which she cherished and wished to someday return to. I thank you all sincerely for your consideration and support.
Warmest regards,
Janet Ayala
I know I cannot be the only one out there that can remember so much, because I would love to speak to them. This has been a lonely process, a very lonely process. For many years.
Janet Ayala-Vázquez
“Who torched hotel, killing 12?” Jersey Journal, 5 May 1982, p. 4.
Janet Ayala-Vázquez’s Story
Recorded on May 5th and May 27th, 2022; Transcribed and edited by Christopher Lopez
Keywords:
Pinter Hotel | fire | displacement | governmental neglect | abandonment | grief | closure | drug addiction as coping mechanisms | gentrification | trauma | ptsd | depression | anxiety | panic attacks | resilience | perseverance | loneliness | solidarity | hope
View Transcript
Janet: That was not their first fire. It was my second fire and their third fire in Hoboken. I wasn’t at the one in Madison Street, the one that happened during the day. It happened right before Easter. But until I saw for myself these news clippings and stuff, that’s when I knew. I never knew about the gentrification until eight years ago.
Chris: Tell me what you remember about the fire at the Pinter Hotel.
Janet: It was around three in the morning, and I was sleeping, my baby was sleeping, and all of a sudden, I sat up on my bed and looked out the window and looked at the clock, and then I looked to the door, and the fire was coming in through the door, and my daughter’s crib was right next to it. So I got up, I screamed to my husband, there’s fire. We were the last ones out, and when I went to pass the door, I couldn’t get to the fire escape because my whole door was already consumed in fire. My husband at the time, he;s deceased now, he turned to control the one that was coming in through the door so he could get me and the baby across. I got to the fire escape, climbed out the window as soon as I climb out the door for the fire escape that the rest of the people had to use just swung open with the force of the flame. As I’m going down the stairs, I hear a woman in Spanish screaming, help me I’m burning in Spanish. At that moment, I thought it was my mother. I ran back up while my husband’s trying to get into their apartment. I ran down when I went to run back up, somebody pulled me and took the baby out of my arms. They pulled me by my hair. They took the baby and then they forced me down. And as soon as I finished the last step on that fire escape, my brother’s little friend, girlfriend, lands at my feet. All crooked, all arms and limbs all over the place because they lived on the fourth floor. After that, I see my husband jumped out the window because my apartment exploded. At this time, there’s no firemen. There was no firemen. And we go towards the window of my mom’s apartment, and all you can see is black smoke. We couldn’t get to them. There was nothing. I believe that when my mom died, she woke me up. I truly believe that, or else, we weren’t going to make it out either.
Janet: After I see the little girl land on my feet and see my husband jump out and he meet me downstairs. As I’m looking up from that same apartment, I see the lady that was related to the girl that had just jumped, and she was in the window with two kids. She threw one and they broke the fall. When she went to jump with the baby in her arms, the baby got scared and pushed away and landed on the flame. He was burned instantly when she fell, she didn’t fall the right way, and she died. Then I hear that somebody in the front is screaming, and there is a little dress slip, and that’s how my mom used to sleep in a slip and undies. So I run to the front of the building, and I see this lady screaming with a fire right behind her, and she’s going to jump because she has no other option, and her leg gets caught on the window. At this point, I still don’t see no firemen, and there was a fire really close to us. And after that, that’s when I finally saw firemen, and I ran before the lady, I ran and told them, we’ll go up. You don’t have to go up. We’ll go up through the window. And they said, no, the buildings collapsing. So I go back and I find that about this lady out the window, and she, over here, gets caught on that window. When the fireman decides to bring up that stairs, she comes undone, and she ends up on the floor after becoming a human torch. Then she became, I don’t know what she became when she fell. She blew open. And at this point, I’m still thinking, maybe there’s some sort of hope we were holding on just to shear hope, and the firemen put it out. I know it was gasoline from the bottom all the way to the top, but the firemen couldn’t get in there until they think the building was you know, that they could go in. And I stood outside until I saw the four bodies taken out and one body bag
Chris: What happened after the fire?
Janet: After the fire, I ended up, I got a small studio in Journal Square. I didn’t know I was pregnant for seven months because I was only 80 something pounds. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I would get up screaming every night that the building was on fire, and until they checked the whole thing, I could n’t relax. And then it turns out I had the urge to eat something, and I went and ate it. I got food poisoning, and ended up in the hospital and found out I was pregnant for seven months. I had no stomach. I had nothing. I was 80 something pounds with the baby that was seven months inside me and the doctors told me we definitely had to do a medical abortion. There’s no way this child is going to have any sort of life. And I looked at him and said its seven months, and he said, yes. And is it alive? Yes, then I’m not doing an abortion. I’ll take my chances. And I did, and she’s 38 now. She’s 38 and has three of our own kids.
Janet: And then I ended up we moved around a lot, because not only did we lose everything in the fire, he lost his job. A couple of weeks after he lost his job, and that’s when things really started going downhill. I was diagnosed, I am diagnosed with PTSD, major depression with recurrence, anxiety and panic attacks. I do control them very well. I am on medication. After that fire, my aunt, my dad, they forgot that we existed. We were left alone, not only by Hoboken, but also because of the family people. The people that survived, I was only 17. I never got any help. I never, but nobody ever told me that that was what happened, because after that, I lost my husband. He couldn’t deal and he became a drug addict. Then I lost my sister to the same thing because they couldn’t deal with what had happened. We lost our mom, we lost my brother, we lost our nephew, which was my sister’s son. Even the dog was burned and my stepdad. I was the last one out of that Pinter’s hotel fire. My husband and I were the last ones out. And things had to be done. We had to collect money. We didn’t have any money to bury them, and there was four. So we went, we had to throw ourselves in the street to get money to bury them, and we didn’t live in Hoboken anymore. We lived towards Jersey City and and towards that way, and we never found out anything. They never told us anything. That’s the other thing. I’ve been looking for their graves for years. I couldn’t find her grave because it was so traumatic at the time that everything happened that I remember it was in Bayamon, and we went to one and they couldn’t find it. She wasn’t there. And we went looking for it. We couldn’t find it. It’s not marked. There’s an open space that’s where she’s buried. But there’s nothing there. There’s no marker. We know it’s there because it’s 84 and ahead of it is 87 and 86 it’s the next one. So we know it’s that one. But is there anything there? No. It’s right next to the road that they used to come in and out of the cemetery. But I have been looking, I have always wanted for somebody to talk about this. My sister died without no closure. I just lost her a year and a half ago, but she went nuts when she lost her son and her mom.
Janet: I want you to know what in my head would be, what would honor my family, my sister that died, what that’ll be two years that my sister passed away, and she was waiting for this memorial when the first one was canceled. She was still with us, so she never got that closure. She knew some of the story, but not all of it. She was lost. She got lost immediately after the fire. It didn’t take very long for her to lose her way, and when she was finally getting help, and you know, being okay, she got very ill, and was been ill for quite a while, but she would always mention that she wanted to be there. That she needed that. She needed that closure.
Janet: Now I’m on a mission. I need to do something to my mom’s grave. And I still got to find the other two. I want to do something. And like I said, we’re a working family. We don’t have nothing extra on the side for me to say, I’m going to go and do this, spend money and spend my time and get this done before I cannot get it done. Because after I’m gone, there’s nobody else to write this story. There is nobody that’s going to be able to really say what happened before, during, and after these fires. And I know I’m not the only one out there. I know I cannot be the only one out there that can remember so much, because I would love to speak to them. This has been a lonely process, a very lonely process. For many years.
