After the Fire
Photos and Text by Ngozi Cole
On the cold morning of January 9th, a fire caused by a space heater explosion swept through Twin Parks North West, a 19-storey public housing complex on 181st Street in Fordham Heights, Central Bronx. Seventeen people died, including nine children. Many of them were immigrants from The Gambia and Mali. It was the deadliest fire in the Bronx in the last three decades since the Happy Land disaster in 1990.
A make-shift memorial at the Angelo Patri Middle School , next to Twin Parks.
Volunteers from the Gambian Youth Organization at the Masjid Ar-Rahmah Mosque preparing to give out food donations on April 14th.
Some community groups stepped in to support over 100 families that were displaced. One of them is the Masjid Ar-Rahmah Mosque which distributed meals for families in need during Ramadan. But displaced tenants say that overall aid response, especially from the Mayor’s Office, has fallen short, despite over $4 million raised to support them.
Victims who have been relocated to hotels are far from what they’re used to with no time table for when they can return or find new homes. The management company of Twin Parks has encouraged the families that were displaced to move back in, claiming that repairs to their apartments will be finished soon. However, tenants claim that repairs are slow, and that relocation from hotels to new housing, are tedious to navigate and burdened by red tape. Three tenants who live in one of the shelter hotels, the Ramada by Wyndham on Gerard Avenue, shared their stories.
GERALD PETRIE
Gerald Petrie, a survivor of the Twin Parks disaster.
One of the survivors that day was 62-year-old Gerald Petrie, who lived in a one room apartment on the 12th floor.
Petrie was born in Brooklyn to a Guyanese father and African American mother. For many years, he considered Brooklyn his home, but moved to Washington Heights, Manhattan in his 30s, working various odd jobs. He finally settled in Twin Parks in Fordham Heights when he moved to the Bronx ten years ago. He worked as a Kitchen Aide at the Union League Club, a social club in downtown Manhattan and lost his job during the pandemic.
On the morning of the fire, Petrie first heard the screams before the putrid smell of smoke wafted into his apartment. Trying not to panic, he wet his bath towel and lined his door. But as smoke started to seep through, he tried to make his way down the stairway. Once he was safe, he called his daughters who live in New Jersey and Florida and told them what had happened- they had been trying to reach him too. After registering with the Red Cross at Angelo Patri Middle School next door, he was relocated to Ramada by Wyndham where he has lived for the past four months.
Petrie has tried to squeeze ten years of his Twin Parks life into his tiny room at the Ramada, a 30-minute bus journey from his old neighborhood. He buys fresh flowers often, to give the compact space a semblance of home. He gets his toiletries from the Coalition for the Homeless, where he goes once a week.
Petrie at The Ramada.
Discarded flowers in Petrie's hotel room
Petrie tries to make use of the hotel room space
Gerald Petrie receives toiletries from a volunteer at the Coalition for the Homeless on Fulton Street, April 29th.
Petrie often returns to his apartment, to get some sense of his old life but insists that his apartment is still not habitable, though the management of Twin Parks has encouraged tenants to move back. He describes a situation when he tried to make food on his stove, and soot blew through the stove vent. “It looked like I had black pepper on my fried egg, and I know I didn’t use no black pepper!” Petrie said.
Inside Petrie's apartment on the 12th floor of Twin Parks.
Petrie's apartment on the 12th floor of Twin Parks has still not been cleaned or renovated by the building.
Petrie insists his apartment on the 12th floor of Twin Parks is uninhabitable and he cannot move back soon.
Petrie chats with his friends who still live in Twin Parks, April 29th.
Ever since moving to Twin Parks ten years ago, Petrie has made Fordham heights his home; the pharmacy, the West African grocery store, the police precinct, all of this is familiar to him. This feeling of displacement unsettles him- he wants to return to the consistent rhythm of his life.
NIKKI CAMPBELL
Nikki Campbell and her son Jamari in their hotel room at The Ramada on April 22nd.
Nikki Campbell whose apartment on the third floor was completely destroyed. Campbell is a 45-year-old single mother of six children, who were trapped in their apartment during the fire. After they were rescued, Campbell registered her family with the Red Cross, and were given some clothes and toiletries as emergency relief.
That evening, Campbell, was assigned two bedrooms at Ramada where she now lives with her five sons, niece, and nephew (age 28 to 14), her eldest son’s wife, and their 7-year-old daughter.
Her most immediate concern is money. She is worried that she might not be able to buy food anymore. “Unless we just buckle down and eat this nastiness”- the dinner supplied to them by NYS Latino Bar and Lounge Association, which has been curry every day for a week. The complaints about the food supplied to the residents are that dietary needs are not considered, and the menu is repetitive. The hotel doesn’t have a kitchen or freezer, so Campbell must rely microwaveable meals and junk food. As a diabetic patient, she is concerned about how this has affected her health.
Nikki Campbell in her hotel room at The Ramada on April 22nd.
Campbell has taken unpaid leave from her job at the New York Parks Department to give her time to search for new housing, and money is running low. She received $4000 from the mayor’s office and most of the financial assistance has come from the Gambian Youth Organization which gave each family $10,000. But Campbell claims that the money is not enough. Furthermore, inflation rates have soared the highest in 40 years, with grocery prices spiking by 17% according to data from the Labor Department.
Campbell sighs, “It hasn’t been easy. For the most part, it’s frustrating”, she pauses, “the depression is real”. There aren’t housing specialists helping residents like Campbell to navigate the murky housing application process, which is laden with red tape. “My needs are urgent. Don’t get me wrong, everybody who’s homeless needs a home, but I needed one, like, yesterday”.
PAULINE BRYANT
Pauline Bryant, 66, wants to move back to her 3-bedroom duplex apartment on the sixth floor. But she’s in a bind. Her apartment was not severely damaged which means one day she can move back but because the repairs are not so extensive, it’s not being given priority.
Bryant in her apartment at Twin Parks on April 20th
Bryant came to the Bronx from Jamaica 1990 and has lived in Twin Parks since1994. She has slowly built a life for herself, working long shifts as a domestic worker, and now as a hospital aide at Westchester Medical Center. Her apartment is a sanctuary, and she doesn’t want to give it up.
Bryant's apartment is still undergoing repairs
Bryant's belongings in one the bedrooms
She often returns to make food and clean up. “From when I come into this country, I live in the Bronx. Everybody know me in this neighborhood, nobody know me anywhere else”, said Bryant.
THE MEMORIAL
On April 16th, Petrie went to a memorial event for the fire victims at Southern Boulevard, in the Bronx. A mural, which has the victims’ names, was set up by Laundry Capital at the Clean Rite Center.
Neighbors, friends and relatives of the victims of the Twin Parks disaster at the memorial event at Southern Boulevard on April 16th.
The mural in Southern Boulevard
The memorial event on April 16th
It is a massive mural, illustrating the expanse of grief and loss felt by those left behind. “I wish they had put the mural by Twin Parks. Southern Boulevard (the memorial site) is so far from us. These were our neighbors and our families that died. Who knows these people over here?” he asked.