Charlie: I have newspaper clippings. I think about that place almost daily. I went down there to the library of Jersey City just to get those articles. I was looking for that information and whatever newspaper I could find. And only on microfilm. What’s crazy to me is…I ran into the fire. When we were running around in the hallway, My mother grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and pulled me out. Because I was ready to run down the stairs and the whole staircase was on fire. She just reached in and pulled me out and my forehead and my hair was burned. And then we ran the other way and it looked like, you know, somebody purposely blocked the door, the fire escape doors. I just seen a lot of people jumping out the windows, landing on the floor. My brother caught a baby.

Carmen(mother): Before the fire. Somebody said to me, you know, I think you should move out of there.

Carmen(daughter): This was like a day before the fire?

Carmen(mother): Pinter, his name was Frank. He owned the bar. He owned the building. My husband used to work for him, and he liked him. You know? He said he was a very good worker, and he liked my husband.

John: Yeah. My dad wasn’t around when we moved there. He passed away a couple of years before we moved there, right?

Carmen(mother): Right.

Carmen(daughter): A year and a half (before)

Carmen(mother): When I went to ask him for an apartment in the hotel, he said, yeah, I told your husband that if anything should happen, you know, that, I would let you stay here, because I was looking for an apartment.

Carmen(daughter): 5 rooms per floor and you had 5 floors. We were on the 3rd. You had the bar (on the first floor), I know because we were on the same floor that we were on at 1040 (Willow Ave) the 3rd floor. And so, you had a little row of apartments. Each floor had 3 apartments.

John: But technically it was a hotel.

Carmen(mother): Depending what you wanted it for.

Carmen(daughter): 1 room, a little kitchen and a bathroom. It was like a hotel.

John: A railroad apartment.

Carmen(daughter): Right, like little small railroads.

Carmen(mother): We were staying there and when the fire happened, I think she’s the one that noticed it (gestures to daughter).

Carmen(daughter): Yea, I got up in the middle of the night.

John: She’s the one that broke the door down because it was nailed in.

Carmen(mother): Carmen (daughter) wakes up because she was cold.

Carmen(daughter): I was 13.

Carmen(mother): So she woke me up and said, mom, I’m cold, where are the blankets? So she went towards the bathroom. So (gestures), here’s the bathroom and here’s the door. So, she saw the smoke. She came over, she says, mom, mom, there’s smoke! So I got up real quick, and I woke up Charlie. I don’t know if I woke you up?

John: Yea, you woke me up.

Carmen(mother): I woke you up? Okay, see, I don’t remember that. I know because he was the littlest one(Charlie), you always watch out for the small ones more. We started out, and those 2(gestures to John and Carmen) were going towards the fire escape. And this one there (gestures to Charlie) was going towards the fire.

Carmen(daughter): He’s going downstairs but he was half sleeping.

John: That’s where the fire was coming up. It was all red. I remember when we were walking towards the fire escape you couldn’t see nothing. It was like walking with your eyes closed. When you turn around, it looks like hell coming up. It’s all red fire just blazing.

Carmen(daughter): This fire spread really, really quick because all the floor, walls, and everything was covered with carpet. It was all red burgundy carpet. All around. The whole building, all inside was all covered with like wallpaper. It was wallpaper with carpet. That fire was running really really fast. When me and John went out the door, my mom said, go on out to the fire escape. When we went out, we see the red amber on the right hand side. That’s where the staircase was at coming up.

Carmen(daughter): So me and John, we go the opposite way to the fire escape. We knew that the maintenance guys nailed that door shut because we would always go out the fire escape and play in the fire escape and they didn’t want us doing that, so they nailed those doors shut. We were trying to think and I kicked that door and it came open, so we went on out. My mom wasn’t right behind me because she went to get Charlie because when Charlie came out the door, he went the opposite way. And that’s when she just went and grabbed him. You couldn’t see it. She just grabbed him, brought him back, and then she went out the door. Alex(Carmen, the mother’s boyfriend), he was coming out and decided he wanted to turn around because he wanted to go get his briefcase with his papers. He went back…too late. When he went to come back out, the fire was past the door. So he had to jump out the window.

John: I don’t know if you jumped with me(gestures to Carmen)? There was a little kid. When we first came out, there was a kid or kids. I don’t know where they came from? It could have been when me and my sister came out. There was kids on fire escape. They were trying to pull the fire escape. You know it comes in…

Carmen(daughter): Like latches…

Carmen(daughter) & John: You gotta pull it up, pull it out, and pull it down.

John: I pulled the gate down and I’m trying to help them down, but there was so many of them. I said, okay, I got an idea.

Carmen(daughter): Because they blocked those damn doors.

John: We had the fire escape there, and there was a roof there. So we jumped from the fire escape to the roof. So this way, these kids can take, you know, through the fire escape while we take another way out.

Charlie: Yea, the storage room.

John: We jumped on to that roof and then from the roof, we jumped down. Then from there, I was helping the kids down from the fire escape and then when we came to the front, someone, a kid came down. I caught him. But then another one hit the front.

Carmen(daughter): One fell, yea.

John: My mind was just like numb. I was just focused on the fire and trying to save people. If you were to ask me my name, I wouldn’t know.

Carmen(daughter): He was helping with the kids coming down the fire escape. When I came out, I was just so shocked. I was just staring. I couldn’t even…

John: Move or something…

Carmen: Feel like I couldn’t even do anything, you know…instincts just didn’t pop in. He(John) was just trying to get the kids off of the thing and I’m just standing there just looking and I see these kids falling and see people out in the windows just throwing kids down.

Carmen: Our next door neighbors right on the same floor that we were coming through didn’t even survive. The family that we lived (neighbors), when we were going down the hallway to the fire escape, you had the family on the left hand side. It was the mother and 2 kids, then you had the old couple that was on the right. None of them survived. We were the only ones that survived on that floor. Even the ones behind us there were the other 2 apartments.

John: Everybody, they all burned because they couldn’t open that door that was nailed shut. So that’s why they had to throw  kids out the window.

Carmen(daughter): Certain smells, anytime we go to hotels, we don’t wanna be above the 3rd floor. I can never live in anything above, like, you know…it just the effects of that tragedy. Knowing that we were in a fire 1 year and the next year, both tragic fires. That changed, altered our lives. Neighbors dying, the people, friends that we were hanging out with dying. That you just played with them yesterday and they’re gone.

John: And what are the odds of my whole family surviving?

Carmen(daughter): Yea, and all of us getting out.

John: Except for one girl that came home.

Charlie: Yea, he has a picture of her (referring to Chris’s photograph of Marisol Zenon who’s entire family died in the fire)

John: There was one girl that was out. To come back to find out her whole family’s dead. She went out, you know, she’s of age, she went out dancing, having a good time. She came back, dead.

Carmen(daughter): And, you know, it’s funny because it still hits.

Charlie: That’s her whole family that died (shows his siblings the portrait of Marisol Zenon)

John: Oh that’s the girl?

Carmen(daughter): Yea. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…7.

Charlie: That’s the building that’s there now(referring to Marisol standing in front of the newly developed building).

Carmen(daughter): Even till today, you still have those thoughts. You still have the nightmares.

John: Yea

Carmen(daughter): Still have little things in our lives that we changed because of it. And you always wonder if that fire didn’t happen, if the one in 1040 didn’t happen, where would we be at now? Our lives would be different. I know it would be different.

Carmen(mother):  I was gonna go to my sister’s baptism in Monroe. That a Jewish community. And they didn’t want the witnesses there, you know, but we had a kingdom hall there. And I had a white dress. That dress didn’t burn. I didn’t understand that. The whole building, and even fell, and that white dress survived. It didn’t burn.

Chris: You still have the dress?

Carmen(mother): No. It was all smoke on it. My sister she said, I’m gonna take it. I’m gonna get all the smell out and she did. It was white, like new. But I didn’t get to use it for the baptism because that was the day…because baptism Jehovah’s Witness’ baptism take place only on Saturdays. So it had to be either Thursday or Friday that that fire happened.

Carmen(daughter): That was that was something else

Carmen(mother): Just didn’t burn!

Charlie: And my father’s conga (survived the fire) I have it in my house.

Carmen(daughter): There’s 2 of them because I have one and you have one

Carmen(mother): And she got all the smell out and the smoke off the dress. And I didn’t get to use it. I mean, I got to use it eventually, but not till her baptism.