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An elderly man and three young siblings died in a fast-moving fire in an Elmhurst house yesterday, even as the children's mother managed to save her two other youngsters.
Firefighters said they were looking into a space heater as the cause of the fire.
"I am so sorry about this," neighbor Mark Marciano, 38, said. "I used to see the kids playing all the time."
The victims were Jocelyn Collado, 1, Christian Gaston, 5, Richard Laboy, 6, and a man, 87, whose name was not available last night, said New York Police Department spokesman Det. Kevin Czartoryski.
Ashley Gaston, 6 months old, and Brandon Gaston, 8, were rescued from the house by the children's mother, Jennifer Gaston, the officials said.
Witnesses reported seeing Gaston carrying the infant under her arm, while dragging out the 8-year-old.
The fire, which started in the basement of 40-77 Denman St., was reported at 6:16 p.m. and was put out by 9:08 p.m., a fire department official said.
A locked gate at the entrance to the basement slowed down firefighters, one source said.
The two-story private house was left a charred mess, with windows blown out, the front door singed and debris strewn on the awning. The yard was decorated as if for a party, with balloons and an American flag.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said what he saw at the scene was awful.
"The mother, of course, is terribly, terribly distraught," Brown said. "She has apparently lost three of her five children."
Fire Deputy Assistant Chief Howard Hill described the locations where the victims died. "There were two children found in a closet ... one infant found in its crib and an adult male found in the bottom of the stairway that led down into the cellar."
A firefighter suffered a shoulder injury in the blaze. It took more than 100 firefighters about three hours to bring the blaze under control as flames and smoke spewed out of the building.
The injured firefighter, whose name was not available, was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was in stable condition, a spokeswoman said.
Neighbors remembered the dead children fondly.
Cindy Sanchez, who lives on the corner of the block and has a daughter close in age to one of the children in the family, said she was pregnant at the same time as the children's mother.
"The kids were always running around on this block," she said. "Everybody knew them."
The fire comes after a blaze in Springfield Gardens killed two people Sunday.
To lose six lives to fire in such a short time is "very troubling," said Dan Andrews, spokesman for Queens Borough President Helen Marshall.
In February 2003, three young children and a woman were killed in an Ozone Park fire apparently after some kind of electrical system problem.
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