Paul Bass Photo
Shanay Cannon and Shaniah Matthews amid the rubble of their mom's third-floor bedroom.
With their mom on the phone, two sisters walked through the still-smoky wreckage of their home, hoping to preserve what mattered most to them, the day after a fire destroyed it.
They knew most of their mother’s possessions in the front bedroom were gone. They hoped key documents had survived. Along with the preserved remains of their lost infant brother.
“I know the title is in the back bottom drawer,” Tasheika Shaw, at the other end of the line, instructed her daughter Shaniah Matthews as Shaniah helped rummage through a dresser.
Daniel Coughlin/NHFD Photos
The scene Saturday night.
That was the scene Sunday on the third floor of 387 Sherman Ave.
Firefighters responded to the report of that fire at the three-family rental property at 11:28 p.m. Saturday. It took them until 1:01 a.m. to bring the three-alarm fire there under control. Three firefighters suffered minor injuries in the process, according to Assistant Fire Chief Daniel Coughlin.
No tenants were hurt. The Red Cross temporarily relocated the households living on the first and second floors.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Coughlin said Sunday. “When there’s that much volume, it’s hard to tell the source,” Coughlin said. “It eats its own evidence.”
Paul Bass Photo
The Sherman Ave. house on Sunday.
Terrence Shaw lived on the third floor with his cousin Shaniah and aunt Tasheika. He said he was arriving home when he saw a bed on fire on the first floor.
He ran upstairs where his mother was sleeping. He woke her up , he said.
“The house is on fire! The house is on fire!” he cried, and everyone got out of the house.
Then “I tried putting out the fire through the window with a wet blanket,” he said. But it was too late. It spread all the way upstairs.
He and his cousin Shanay Cannon, who lives nearby, said they later learned that a friend of a tenant on a lower floor had thrown a molotov cocktail, causing the bed to erupt in flames. They hadn’t learned the reason.
Shaniah had just begun her shift as a Yale New Haven Hospital certified nursing assistant when she received the call about the fire. She raced back home.
She and her mom and cousin relocated for now to Shanay’s home nearby.
Returning to Sherman Avenue on Sunday, Shanay and Terrence and Shaniah made their way past charred walls and floors and piles of debris to see what they could salvage.
The mom’s bedroom, in front, was in ruins.
But they did find that title to her car.
Next they looked for her car keys.
“Does your key have a little thing on it?” Shaniah asked.
“Yes,” mom replied over the cell.
“I got it.”
They also found the memorial box containing a strand of hair, first shoes, and umbilical cord section that belonged to Trelon, Shania’s brother, who she said died at three months old in 2005.
The fire had ravaged a second bedroom …
… and the kitchen.
Shaniah’s back bedroom remained intact, except for a dead mouse on the floor.
She said she was sad, or course, about losing her home of the past ten years. She was also grateful no one got hurt.
“It could have been worse,” she reflected, surveying the damage. “It’s a sign to start over. We went through a lot here. Time to move on to something bigger and better.”
