FDNY Admits Ambulances Delayed Getting to Fatal Fire

The FDNY admitted Monday that ambulances were delayed in responding to the Easter morning house fire that killed two 4-year-old kids.

“We are looking at the timeline and why it happened,” Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said, referring to the horrific Bayswater blaze that killed half-siblings Aniya and Jai’Launi Tinglin, both 4.

After the children were pulled from the Bay 30th Street home, several precious minutes ticked away as firefighters screamed for paramedics, who were nowhere to be found.

Cassano added that the department is reviewing dispatch tapes to try to find out what caused the delay, noting that ambulances typically are not dispatched after an initial 911 comes in, but rather, after a working fire is confirmed.

“When you have what we call a working fire, an ambulance should be dispatched,” Cassano said. “It wasn’t dispatched at that time.”

“It’s a very emotional scene,” the commissioner continued. “There was an infant in this case, which makes it more emotional.”

The fire also injured Jai’Launi’s 4-year-old twin sister as well as the children’s 63-year-old grandfather, Roy Tinglin, who awoke to find his bed alight only after one of the terrified children began screaming.

An FDNY spokesman told The Post that the home did not have any operational smoke detectors when the flames broke out, which is believed to have happened when one of the kids was playing with a lighter.

“Obviously I want to know all the facts. My heart goes out to the family,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “We need to know what happened there. I know there is an investigation under way there. When we have results, I’ll let you know.”

Meanwhile, the heartbroken mom of one of the tots who died blasted the FDNY for not getting ambulances to the blaze quickly enough, as her daughter lay dying on the front lawn.

“But what happened here? What happened to the ambulances? Where were they at?” asked Khalilah Waymer, the mother of Aniya Tinglin, who perished along with her half-brother.

EMS workers finally showed up 21 minutes after the original 911 call came in at 11:51 p.m. Saturday.

“It doesn’t make sense to me. What happened to their protocol here?” Waymer told The Post as tears rolled down her face. “Then when they got here, the EMTs didn’t move fast? They didn’t care about my baby?!”

A video taken by a neighbor shows a group of angry firefighters shouting down the block at paramedics, who leisurely made their way toward the house.

“Stop walking and run!” one can be heard screaming. “Come on, let’s go! There’s a f—ing baby not breathing! Hurry up!”

Waymer said St. John’s Hospital doctors broke “their own rules,” pulling out all the stops to try to revive Aniya.

“They said they worked on them for an hour at the hospital!” the 34-year-old Waymer said of her daughter and the girl’s half-brother.

“They said two doctors were working on them and that’s not what they were supposed to do, but they were breaking their own rules trying to do everything possible to save them.”

Republished with permission of the New York Post