SCHENECTADY – Henry Perkins' worst nightmare came true about 30 minutes after he arrived at Ellis Hospital around 4:20 a.m. Saturday.
The little girl who he helped his now pregnant fiancée Anisa Sego raise since she was 6 months old, was suddenly gone.
Alana Lynn Sego, who turned 4 in December, succumbed to injuries she suffered in a fast-moving fire that ripped through the family’s Mont Pleasant home around 3 a.m. Saturday.
Still struggling with grief, compounded by doubts over whether they could have done more to save Alana, the parents are left with wonderful memories of the girl, the torment of losing her and an uncertain future.
"I blame myself for not waking up sooner, I blame myself for not getting her ...," Sego, 29, said during an interview with the Times Union. "I feel like it's my fault because I'm her mom, I'm supposed to protect her and I didn't."
Autopsy results indicate that Alana died of smoke inhalation.
Perkins and Sego's toddler and Alana's older brother, 7, and sister, 9, were also inside the apartment at the time of the fire.
City police and fire officials have offered few details about the circumstances of the deadly blaze except to say the investigation is ongoing and that it does not appear to be suspicious.
Perkins and Sego described a tenacious fast-moving inferno that quickly filled their two-bedroom apartment with smoke and flames, making it all but impossible for Perkins to get into Alana’s room.
The couple, who have lived on the second floor of the two-family home on Sixth Avenue for the past three years, said they are convinced that an older gas furnace built into the wall that emits heat on both sides of the unit, located near Alana's bedroom, is what sparked the inferno.
"The heater would work when it wanted to, sometimes we went days without heat, sometimes it would kick on, and if we turned the heater off, it would stay going full bore,” said Perkins, 34.
Sego said that the smoke detectors in the apartment never went off during the blaze.
Perkins recalled flames “shooting out of the side of the heater” during his ill-fated attempt to rescue Alana. He said they had complained to the landlord about the heater.
Sego said they called the city code enforcement office on the landlord.
Schenectady Chief Building Inspector Chris Lunn said Wednesday that the one complaint the city has on file, from October 2020, is about the apartment not having hot water; it was resolved two days after it was received.
Sego and Perkins acknowledged they stopped paying the $975 monthly rent because they contend the landlord wasn't fixing any of the problems at the apartment. When reached by phone from a number the couple provided to the Times Union, the landlord said the couple had not paid rent for about two years.
But the landlord, who declined to give his name, said Wednesday that he has not set foot in the apartment since the start of the pandemic, roughly about 18 months ago. He accused the couple of lying and said there were no problems with the heating system, which he said is both gas and electric.
"It's a furnace, and it never gives problems, and (Perkins) never complained about heat," said the landlord. "What they're saying is all lies."
Frantic scene
Sego grew emotional as she recounted the circumstances around her daughter's death, when she awoke to a smoke-filled apartment.
“I wake up and start choking, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe at all, and when I sat up, the whole house was literally full of black smoke,” she said.
Her 9-year-old daughter, who had fallen asleep on the couch, grabbed the 13-month-old, and dashed out of the house. Sego followed them, as Perkins ran to a back room to get their 7-year-old son and then left the home.
“I’m screaming that my daughter is still up in the house 'cause everybody’s losing it and going crazy,” Sego recalled.
Her frantic cries prompted Perkins to run back upstairs to Alana's room, where she had been sleeping on the top bunk.
“It’s hard because it all happened so quick, and me not thinking when I’m jumping up at 2-something in the morning, I’m not realizing what’s going myself,” explained Sego. “When I first woke up, I didn’t comprehend anything.”
She recalled seeing Alana laid out on a stretcher and having to be restrained herself by two Schenectady police officers as she made a desperate bid to get closer to her child. Both Alana and Perkins ended up at Ellis Hospital.
“I went into the room and they were doing CPR on her, and they told me she’s not looking good, and I asked them ‘what could it possibly be? And they told me they can’t tell me,” said Sego. “I couldn’t stand to look at her like that, I had to walk out.”
She went to Perkins’ room where a nurse later told them Alana had died.
“I lost it, and they asked if we wanted to see her one last time, and I didn’t want to – I couldn’t see her looking the way she did,” added Sego.
Sego changed her mind after speaking with a nurse.
“Her face was so deteriorated and burned, I couldn’t recognize her,” said Sego. “I was praying it wasn’t my daughter, not to be mean to someone else’s daughter."
Perkins recalled seeing "flames shooting down, like on a downward angle toward the gas stove, coming from the vicinity of the heater,” and the wall of flames that blocked him from getting to his stepdaughter.
Forced to retreat, Perkins said he pointed out Alana’s bedroom to firefighters once outside the apartment.
He was soon reunited with his fianceé and the other children who were staying with a neighbor they didn't know down the street.
Perkins was taken by ambulance to Ellis Hospital where he was hooked up to an IV and being treated for burns to his face and arms even though he said at the time that he seemed impervious to pain not knowing the fate of his stepdaughter.
One of the nurses told him Alana was “alive, but she wasn’t doing good.” That wasn’t enough for Perkins, who threatened to rip the IV out and “go get answers for myself.”
Minutes later, they learned that the little girl had died.
When authorities allowed them back inside the apartment to retrieve any belongings they could salvage, they were stunned by what they saw.
“The weird thing is that barely any of Alana’s room (appeared to have been burned), it was all smoke, like just black smoke all around the room on the walls,” said Perkins, a laborer, who also does odd jobs.
They are comforting themselves now with memories of Alana, who loved spaghetti and hot dogs, and anything to do with Peppa Pig, a popular children's character.
"When somebody's down and feeling bad, she would make faces and say something smart and funny just to make the person laugh to get their mind off what they're going through," her mother recalled. "She was friendly to everybody, and just full of joy and life."
“She was a very active, funny little child, always tried to share everything with everybody,” said an emotional Perkins. "She liked going to the park, going for walks along the bike trail and swimming.
The couple are expecting their second child together, a boy, in March.
"She was just outgoing and everybody loved her," said Sego.
"lively" - Google News
January 20, 2022 at 06:07PM
https://ift.tt/3KvsvBh
Grieving parents mourn life of lively 4-year-old Schenectady fire victim - Albany Times Union
"lively" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35lls9S
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Grieving parents mourn life of lively 4-year-old Schenectady fire victim - Albany Times Union"
Post a Comment