Officials Study Criminal Charges in Fatal Bronx Blaze

The top two floors of a Bronx apartment building where two firefighters died and four others were injured on Sunday had been converted into illegal rooming houses with makeshift partitions, according to city and housing officials.

As a result, the city's Department of Investigation and the Bronx district attorney's office said that they had opened inquiries into whether the subdivision of those apartments, and the deaths they might have contributed to, amounted to a crime. But city officials cautioned that many gaps in information and evidence remained, including who built the partitions inside the apartments in the building on E. 178th Street; when they were built; and who, ultimately, bore the responsibility for a fire that, coupled with a blaze in Brooklyn, came on the deadliest day for the Fire Department since Sept. 11, 2001.

"One of the things being done is looking at whether or not the illegal construction was the cause of the firefighter deaths," one city official said. "Whether the illegal construction hampered their effort to find an escape route or get access in a timely way to the fire. Was the risk of death a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the construction?"

The inquiries came on a day of mounting speculation as the injured firefighters continued to recuperate, and dozens of uprooted tenants from the Bronx building continued to make do in temporary shelters or with relatives. And they came, too, on a day in which the owner of the burned building in the Mount Hope section of the Bronx came forward to defend herself.

Speaking with reporters at her small real estate office at 780 Lydig Avenue in the Bronx, the owner, Lesley Berman, said she had bought the building in January 2004 and did not know that some of the apartments had been subdivided. But she also acknowledged that she had not been inside all of the apartments and could not say who, including perhaps the tenants themselves, might have been responsible for subdividing them.

"If they have done something that they know to be incorrect, they won't give me access and the law doesn't allow me to gain access to something unless I am given permission," Ms. Berman said about her tenants. "I would never rent a three-bedroom apartment to 18 people; that's overcrowding."

And yet she said that even if the units were subdivided, she might not have chosen to evict the tenants. "We're talking about human lives, first and foremost," Ms. Berman said. "Do you tell them that they have to vacate because they have too many children? Do they tell me when they give birth? No."

Several neighbors said it was an open secret that apartments in buildings like 236 East 178th Street were carved up and rented out, room by room, for anywhere from $80 to $150 a week. A reporter spent time yesterday with Agustin Reyes and his wife, Josefina, who returned to their second-floor apartment to collect a few essentials. Even in the dark the apartment appeared to be split into unnaturally tiny compartments.

At the building next door at 234 East 178th Street, also owned by Ms. Berman, residents said that subdivisions were not the main worry but rather basic provisions like heat and hot water. The superintendent for the two buildings, they said, was rarely around, and the boiler seemed to be turned on and off at random.

One longtime resident, Anaida Torres, said that she had to boil the water to take a bath and turn on the stove for heat. She also said that she complained to 311 the day of the fire.

"If you have hot water twice in a week, you're lucky," she said.

One person who may be a key figure in the city's investigations is Cesar Rios, who owned the building for about 15 years before selling to Ms. Berman. During his ownership, the building was cited for many housing code violations, mostly for problems related to the boiler, peeling paint and leaky ceilings.

He also piled up tens of thousands of dollars, apparently, in unpaid water bills in a long battle with the city. It was enough of a concern for the company that holds the mortgage, Baron 1990 Associates, to sue Mr. Rios, said Barry H. Levites, a Bronx real estate broker who is a partner in the company. And even though Mr. Rios settled with Mr. Levites, Ms. Berman also became ensnared in a dispute over unpaid water bills, Mr. Levites said.

A call to Mr. Rios's home in New Fairfield, Conn., was answered by a man who said he was Mr. Rios's brother Jose. He said it had been more than a year since Cesar Rios had any involvement in the building.

It was not immediately clear whether city officials have interviewed Mr. Rios. But Ms. Berman said that she had been interviewed by fire officials.

Fire officials yesterday attended the first wake for their fallen colleagues. It was for Firefighter John G. Bellew, in West Nyack, N.Y., and it coincided with the announcement from Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta that Firefighter Bellew would be promoted posthumously to the rank of fire lieutenant.

Last night, hundreds of firefighters in their dress uniforms stood in a line that snaked around the Joseph W. Sorce Funeral Home in West Nyack waiting to pay their final respects to Firefighter Bellew. They spoke in low voices about their injured colleagues, the funerals and the prospects of Firefighter Bellew's wife, Eileen, raising the couple's four children alone. The oldest is 6; the youngest, 5 months.

Inside, photographs of Firefighter Bellew - in swim trunks at the beach, beaming as a child blowingout birthday candles and with his wife as she cradled a newborn - greeted mourners. Mrs. Bellew left notes in the foyer asking visitors for photos and anecdotes to create a memory book for her children.

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting for this article. From The New York Times on the Web (c) The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission.

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