by MELISSA GRACE
A beloved grandmother was killed yesterday as a fire fueled by a smoldering cigarette tore through her Brooklyn apartment, fire officials said.
Carrie Conway, an 83-year-old, wheelchair-dependent diabetic with asthma, died just as her large and close-knit family feared she would.
"I lived with her ... to make sure this never happened," said John Conway, 40, one of her 18 grandchildren. "She smoked and there were oxygen tanks."
The half-dozen tanks in her one-bedroom home in East New York didn't ignite or contribute to the blaze, Fire Department officials said.
But her smoking did.
Several of her relatives said their strong-willed widowed "Gramommy" battled all their efforts to get her to quit, and that she managed to stash cigarettes in hatboxes and pocketbooks.
Conway's home-health attendant blamed herself for the fire, which the FDNY attributed to careless smoking.
"If I didn't go food shopping this never would have happened," sobbed Sherry Cooper outside the charred home where Conway died alone.
The 12:16 p.m. blaze started in the bedroom - where Conway was found - of her Loring Ave. apartment in the city-run Pink Houses.
Sixty firefighters battled the third-floor blaze for 30 minutes before bringing it under control.
Conway's family collected the belongings they were able to salvage, including a picture of her cradling one of her nine great-grandchildren and one of her seated below a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"I'm numb," said Steve Conway, one of her grandsons. "I've got to bury my grandmother this week."
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