Bronx home where fire killed 10 is visible from PS 73, where teacher Craig Monteverde (below) remembers kids.
Gone But Not Forgotten: The Magassa Family Tragedy Remembered
The desk in Room 512 of Public School 73 in the Bronx was kept vacant for a long time, a tribute to a boy who died with eight other kids and a woman in the city’s worst house fire in four decades.
But Bandiougou Magassa’s smudged beige desk is occupied now, and the classroom is no longer filled with tears as this year’s fifth-graders happily scramble to finish essays.
From the room’s window, you can see the rear of the still-damaged house where members of two West African families perished: five Magassa children and the wife and four kids of Mamadou Soumare.
In the year since the blaze that tore at hearts across the city, the Magassa family has begun recovering, but Soumare remains bereft.
The school that lost three students and felt a grief second only to that of the families has moved forward and will honor the dead with lasting monuments.
A true symbol of hope from the ashes is first-grader Hatouma Magassa, who was rushed to the hospital that night, her lungs filled with the same smoke that killed her siblings.
In a bright yellow shirt and blue jeans, she walked past the classroom where her brother Bandiougou once studied, smiled and embraced his teacher.
“The Magassa kids love to hug,” teacher Craig Monteverde beamed.
Late on the night of March 7, a space heater’s overheated electrical cord ignited the bedding and a pile of clothes in the ground-level apartment of a four-story brick house at 1022 Woodycrest Ave. in Highbridge.
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