#NYCHA faces suit for Harlem ‘death trap’ building where fire killed 6

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The Pollidores’ home is seen damaged after the 2019 fire that left six dead.
G.N. Miller

The families of the victims who perished in a Harlem public-housing fire last year — including a mom and four of her children —  say the building was a “death trap,” according to new court papers.

Andrea Pollidore, 45, her daughters Nakiyra, 11, Brooklyn, 6, and Andre, 8, son Elijah, 3, and family friend Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, 33, all died in her fifth-floor apartment at the seven-story New York City Housing Authority building on West 142nd Street on May 8, 2019.

“The Frederick E. Samuels Houses apartment building was a death trap,” allege twin Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuits filed by one of Pollidore’s surviving daughters, Raven Reyes, and Abdul-Rauf’s mother, Jamilla Abdullah.

An official report on the fire indicated that it started in the kitchen — but the documents say there were a series of design, maintenance and operations shortcomings in the building that contributed to the deaths.

The tragedy came about despite NYCHA being put on notice over “numerous fatal fires at NYCHA housing complexes in the years and even months leading up to the May 2019 Harlem fire,” the court papers allege.

For instance, NYCHA allegedly failed to monitor and maintain the fire alarms and smoke detectors in the Harlem building’s hallways and the fire escape and window in that particular apartment. It also failed to install adequate fire alarms, smoke detectors, sprinklers and other fire-suppression systems throughout the building, the court documents allege.

The victims all “were asleep, helplessly trapped in the burning fifth-floor apartment that had steel bars on the windows and no sprinklers,” Evan Oshan, the lawyer for Reyes and Abdullah, said in a statement.

“The NYCHA defendants intentionally ignored the risk to life and limb associated with the dangerously defective design of Apartment 5G, which improperly and fatally blocked access to the Apartment’s fire escape and egress points,” the suit charges. “This tragedy was foreseeable and preventable.

“The victims would unquestionably be alive today if the NYCHA defendants and their employees, [had] not engaged in a long and well documented pattern of intentional and grossly negligent conduct that constituted reckless indifference to the tenants they were entrusted to safely shelter and protect,” Oshan said.

Authorities at the time said Pollidore may have fallen asleep in the kitchen while cooking, in addition to possibly disconnecting the smoke detectors.

But Oshan told The Post, “We are not convinced that this was a simple food fire.” The lawyer said he is continuing to investigate what caused the fire so the families can get answers.

A rep with the city Housing Authority told The Post on Friday, “NYCHA does not comment on pending litigation.”