Newsday

Maschay Joa Valdez, 40, his wife, Delkis Balbuena, 34, and three girls, 8, 3 and 15 months, were overtaken by fumes as they huddled in a bathroom and bedroom in their sixth-floor apartment. All were dead or near death when firefighters burst through their locked door in the Robert Fulton housing complex just after 6:30 a.m.

The couple's son, 10, whom officials did not identify, was carried alive from a bedroom where his father and infant sister, Ruth Joa, were found, said Dep. Chief James Daly of the New York City Fire Department. Delkis Balbuena was pulled from a full bathtub, where she lay with Nanny, 8. Bet-El, 3, was crouched below the bathroom sink. They suffered from respiratory and cardiac arrest.

The smoke detector was disconnected and didn't have its backup 9-volt battery, Daly said. Residents often disconnect them, the tenant association president said.

The blaze was contained to the kitchen and the cause is under investigation.

Tenants awoke to sirens and the horrifying sight of firefighters carrying the family's limp bodies to the street, where emergency workers tried to resuscitate them. Miguel Acevedo, who lives nearby, watched as a firefighter ran across Ninth Avenue to an emergency vehicle with the boy's still body.

"He was lifeless. He wasn't moving," said Acevedo, 48, a custodian. "As a parent, it was the worst thing you could see."

The boy was in critical condition at a hospital last night. His parents and sisters were pronounced dead at another hospital. Attempts to find relatives yesterday were not successful.

Neighbors said the family moved in a little over a year ago. Nancy Santiago, 42, said she heard screaming in the apartment at 6:30 a.m.As the hallway filled with white smoke, another neighbor pounded on the door, but there was no response, she said.

The family was "definitely trying to make their way out, but the only door was blocked by fire," Daly said. The apartment entrance opens to a hallway and the kitchen, which was engulfed within a few minutes.

"If the fire gets into that hallway, there is no way to get out without going through it," said Anna Marie Baronowski, the tenant association president.

She said she and other tenants often unplug their smoke alarms. "I can take a hot shower and the hard-wired [detector] will go off," she said. "Sometimes, you forget to plug it back in."

The fire was the deadliest the city has seen since March 2007, when a fire in a Bronx building killed nine children and one adult.