Petersburg residents call for action to avoid repeat of deadly house fire

BY DAVID RESS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Jan 17, 2007

PETERSBURG -- They were saddened by the deaths of three children in a house fire. Angered. Afraid it could happen again.

About 110 Petersburg residents came out to last night's City Council meeting to ask for action.

They suggested tougher enforcement of housing codes. They also asked the city to step in when utilities are cut off, as was the case in the 400 block of South Harrison Street, where a house burned last Friday morning, killing three children and displacing seven family members.

"We drive down the streets, and we see these properties and we think this is somebody else's problem," said resident Phil Cheney.

"There are hundreds of places like Harrison Street in this city," said resident Lloyd Hines.

Mayor Annie M. Mickens promised that the city would do everything it could, saying specifically that it would work with electric, gas and water utilities companies to deal with cutoffs.

The fire early Friday morning killed Na'Tyah Hazer, 11, and her brother Mark Banks Jr., 6, as well as their cousin, John Harper Jr., 16.

Six-month-old Damian Hazer, rescued from the flames by his 13-year-old sister Yorel, remains in the hospital, as does their mother, Diamond Hazer, who suffered severe burns while trying to fight her way through the flames to save the children.

The five other members of the extended family who shared the house have been released from the hospital. Relatives from out of town are trying to help them get back on their feet and have set up a bank account, the Hazer Fund, at Bank of America for anyone who wants to help.

Petersburg fire officials are still investigating the cause of the fire, but they say none of the smoke detectors in the house appears to have worked. Fire Marshal Charles L. Moore Jr. said he is not sure why the smoke detectors failed. A relative of the family who lived in the house said the family had put batteries in the alarms within the past few months.

The landlord, Donatus Amaram, said he installed at least four smoke detectors before Diamond Hazer and her sister, Hope Hazer, moved in last year.

Petersburg housing inspector A.R. Moore Sr. said yesterday that he remembered seeing smoke detectors in April 2005 while investigating a complaint that the property was being operated as an illegal boarding house. At the time, a neighbor had complained that eight people were living there, two to a room, while inspectors found the bedrooms were padlocked, a sign of an illegal boarding house.

The official log sheet of the inspection found that the woman who leased the house from Amaram was charging residents $100 a week per room. City zoning officials decided to take no action. The woman is not one of the Hazer sisters.

A 2002 notice from the city, meanwhile, noted that a repairman was working on the ceiling after a tenant complained that a ceiling fan couldn't be fixed because of a roof problem, while a 2001 letter from the city ordered the roof be repaired.

Contact staff writer David Ress at dress@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6051.