A 13-year-old girl who died of injuries suffered in an apartment fire in San Francisco’s Mission District earlier this month has been identified, according to the medical examiner’s office.
Amal Shaibi was the daughter of Mohamed Shaibi, who also died as a result of injuries suffered during the blaze.
While Amal Shaibi died last Wednesday, her father died on March 14 as a result of injuries also suffered during the early morning blaze on March 11 in the family’s apartment above Maurice’s Corner liquor store at 3046 24th St.
San Francisco fire spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said that emergency crews performed CPR on Amal and Mohamed Shaibi and that both regained their pulses before being transported to the hospital, where both remained alive for days before succumbing to their injuries.
The blaze that killed the teenage girl and her father was reported at 4:29 a.m. on March 11 and was extinguished at 5:01 a.m., fire officials said.
Upon arriving at the scene, fire crews saw dark smoke billowing out of a bedroom above the front door and saw flames coming from the living room.
Firefighters rescued Amal Shaibi’s two brothers, a 6-year-old and a teenager, via a ladder up to the apartment window, Talmadge said.
The other three victims were brought out of the burning building by firefighters who entered the building.
Emergency responders performed CPR on three of the five family members injured in the blaze. Following CPR, Mohamed and Amal Shaibi regained their pulses and the 6-year-old boy regained both his pulse and consciousness.
All three were taken to San Francisco General Hospital, Talmadge said.
Talmadge said the other two victims, the mother and the teenage son, were taken to Saint Francis Memorial Hospital with serious smoke inhalation injuries.
Fire crews also discovered two other people who had been sleeping illegally inside the padlocked liquor store below the apartment, Talmadge said.
Firefighters cut two padlocks to free the pair from the liquor store. The pair then immediately left the scene, according to fire officials.
According to Talmadge, the family injured in the blaze owns the liquor store below the apartment. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, at a hearing called for by San Francisco Supervisor David Campos at the Board of Supervisors’ neighborhood services and safety committee meeting last week, said that the first engine arrived at the scene three minutes after the fire was reported, but that the first ambulance took 13 minutes to arrive at the scene.
Hayes-White said though that once the four ambulances arrived at the scene, the fire victims were still being stabilized and were not ready to depart for hospitals right away.
She said the San Francisco Fire Department is trying to get response times down to less than 10 minutes, explaining that the department is required to have 90 percent of ambulances respond to major emergencies in less than 10 minutes.
The fire chief said that the city’s ambulances are only responding to major emergencies in less than 10 minutes 82 percent of the time.
Hannah Albarazi, Bay City News
