Madonna Badger: 'I Couldn't Get In the Window' to Save Family'

NBC- In an exclusive interview with TODAY’s Matt Lauer that aired Thursday, Madonna Badger spoke out for the first time about the night she lost her family in a Connecticut house fire on Christmas.


The blaze, which officials believe started from embers that her boyfriend, Michael Borcina, had placed in a paper bag, engulfed her $1.7 million Victorian home in Stamford, Conn., claiming the lives of 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah and 9-year-old Lily, as well as Badger’s parents.

When Badger awoke in bed the night of the fire, choking from the smoke, she did not hear an alarm.

“It was silent,’’ she said. “It was the scariest silence.’’



She climbed out the window. She recalled in harrowing detail her efforts to get back into the house. On her knees on the front porch looking through the windows, she realized she had a decision to make: "The windows were my mom and dad's windows. So I had to decide, 'Do I go in and save them? Or do I go save my children?' And so I ran the other way to save my children."


But scaffolding that had been set up for renovations prevented her from entering.


"I scrambled up the scaffolding to get to Grace's window. And I opened that window and the smoke that hit me, it was just the blackest, like an ocean. There was twirling and there was embers and all kinds of stuff in it. And I kept trying to hold my breath and put my head in...And I couldn't get in."



She saw her boyfriend Borcina fall out the back bedroom window as fire trucks arrived. His eyes, she said, had been burned shut. Still, he shouted to the girls through the windows to jump to him.


Badger never got a glimpse of her girls.




"It was the blackest smoke I've ever seen," she told Lauer. "If I could have seen them, I would have gone in. I mean, it's impossible to describe how it is that you can't go in and save your own children. But I couldn't get through that smoke. I couldn't."


Ten days after the fire, Badger spoke at her daughters' funeral.

Lauer asked what many wondered: How did she find the strength to eulogize her children, so soon after their deaths?

"I don't know," she replied. "I don't know. I think it was all God's grace. I have no idea."

Eyewitess News Channel 7 Tonight at 6PM!

Just a little while ago Joe and I grabbed lunch down in Shippan (Stamford) and drove down Shippan Avenue all the way to the end, near the pier, to eat.  I didn't even realize there would be news vans own there, but then again I forgot recently the Christmas Day house fire made news once again due to the recent findings that no criminal charges will be filed. 

The Eyewitess news anchor wanted to interview me, but I was too camera shy and caught a little too off-gaurd so I offered up my fiancee instead.  He gave a quick two minute interview basically accusing the city of demotiolishing the house too soon (to cover their ass, basically).

I will bootleg his interview and get it up as soon as possible!!

News Article here:

CNN-  A state prosecutor says he will not file criminal charges in the Stamford, Connecticut, house fire that killed three young girls and their grandparents on Christmas morning last year.


Stamford State's Attorney David I. Cohen said in a statement Friday that after a thorough examination of investigations conducted by Stamford's fire and police departments, including reports, interviews, photographs, seized evidence and autopsy data, there is "insufficient evidence" to bring criminal charges.

 The fire, which broke out around 5 a.m. Christmas Day, was probably caused by embers removed from a fireplace, Stamford Chief Fire Marshal Barry Callahan said.



According to Cohen, it remains unclear if smoke detectors were working in the home the night of the blaze, but some precautions were taken.



"While in hindsight, they were obviously insufficient, when viewed from the perspective of that night, they do not rise to the level of criminal negligence," he said.



Lily, 10, and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah Badger died in the fire along with their grandparents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson.

 The girls' mother, Madonna Badger, and a friend, Michael Borcina, were able to escape.





According to a legal notice submitted to the Stamford city clerk's office, Madonna Badger is suing the city for property damage, personal injury, negligence and civil rights violations.

 Two days after the fire, the city of Stamford determined the large Victorian home was unsafe and tore it down.

 Badger says the city and some of its employees destroyed her home and its contents, valued in excess of $3 million.



She adds that in destroying the remains of the house, the city destroyed evidence that could have helped bring closure to the tragic incident.



In his statement, Cohen said future fire investigations should be handled differently, suggesting that police and the state attorney's office should be contacted before any demolition of property, and that local fire marshals should contact state fire marshals for an outside perspective.

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6:10 PM update:  They edited Joe out.  Bastards!

"When such a horrific event occurs, it is only natural that those related to the victims and the public in general want to hold someone responsible for what is otherwise an inexplicable accident," he said. "I am aware that many have emotionally judged this circumstance differently. That is understandable. There is no way that I could begin to conceive of the depth of loss by the Badger family."

Mother Plans to Sue City Over Fatal Blaze

STAMFORD -- The mother of three daughters killed in a Christmas morning house fire in December plans to sue the city, officials said Thursday.



Joseph Capalbo, Stamford's legal affairs director, confirmed that a Massachusetts attorney representing Madonna Badger sent a notice of intent to sue via certified mail to the city legal department and the town clerk Thursday. Capalbo said he could not comment on the contents of the notice because he hadn't seen it.



The notice was sent by Frank Corso, a personal injury attorney with offices in Boston and Rehoboth, Mass., who declined to comment Thursday afternoon.



"I'm unable to talk to you right now," Corso said, before hanging up.



Badger lost her parents and three daughters -- 9-year-old Lily and 7-year-old twins Sarah and Grace -- on Dec. 25 when a raging fire tore through her 116-year-old, three-story home on Shippan Point, an affluent waterfront community on Long Island Sound.



The notice from Badger adds to the growing collection of legal matters arising from the fatal fire.



Last month, attorneys for Matthew Badger, the estranged husband of Madonna Badger, filed a notice of intent to sue city officials for negligence in their inspections of the home before the fire. The notice further alleged that city building officials intentionally destroyed evidence when they demolished what was left of Madonna Badger's home a day after the fire.



At the time, Capalbo rebutted the claims in Matthew Badger's notice to sue and called the allegations "baseless and without merit."



In late April, an insurance company covering contractor Michael Borcina's company, Tiberias Construction, filed a lawsuit asking a New York state judge to release it from defending lawsuits and paying claims related to the fire because of alleged misrepresentations on his applications and yearly reports.



An initial investigation revealed the fire began after Borcina, a friend of Madonna Badger, cleaned out the fireplace shortly after 3 a.m., placing embers in a bag and leaving them inside a new mudroom, or just outside in an enclosed trash bin.



Borcina and Madonna Badger escaped the fire. The three girls and Madonna Badger's mother, Pauline Johnson, died from smoke inhalation. Her father, Lomer Johnson, died from blunt head trauma suffered in a fall outside a second-floor window and onto the roof.



Police and fire officials described the blaze as accidental and said no arrests were anticipated, but State's Attorney David Cohen has been reviewing an investigation of the fire since February and will make the decision whether criminal charges are filed.



A demolition crew tore the house down on Dec. 26. City Chief Building Official Robert DeMarco inspected what was left of the home with Stamford Fire Marshal Barry Callahan before declaring the building unsafe and issuing the order to have it razed.



DeMarco has said he checked with the city fire marshal's office before ordering the demolition.

Connecticut Christmas Fire: Granddaughter Writes Poem for Deceased Family

ABC News- A 12-year-old girl whose grandparents died in the Christmas Day fire in Connecticut that also claimed the lives of her three cousins has written a poem about her grandmother, whom she called Nana.

Morgan Johnson's poem is titled "The Nana Who Lived in the Car" because Johnson's late grandmother, Pauline Johnson, had told the girl that she felt like the old woman who lived in a car -- instead of the storybook woman who lived in a shoe -- because she spent so much time driving between family houses.

"Three of them now play in Heaven, And the Nana drives them around in her car there, With a stuffed animal bunny and a G," wrote Morgan, who lives in Kentucky.

Morgan called her grandfather, Lomer Johnson, "G." Before his death, Lomer Johnson had fulfilled a life-long dream of playing Santa Claus at New York City's Saks Fifth Avenue, at the encouragement of his granddaughters.

"She had four granddaughters, Who loved them so, The Nana the bunny and the G," she wrote. "She ate and cooked foods of all different kinds, And had a very kind and pretty mind."

Johnson's three other granddaughters, Lily, 10, and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah were killed in the fire. The only survivors were the girls' mother, Madonna Badger, and her friend, Michael Borcina, a contractor who had been working on the home.


"That poor woman lost her whole family in one fell swoop," Stamford Interim Fire Chief Antonio Conte said at a news conference Tuesday. "I can't imagine how that feels."

The fire began sometime after 3 a.m. Dec. 25 while the occupants of the house were asleep. Officials said the fire was started by fireplace embers that had been cleared out of the fireplace and put in either a mud room attached to the house or a trash enclosure next to it.

It is unclear whether there were smoke alarms in the house, which was in the middle of an extensive renovation.

The Connecticut medical examiner said that the five family members died of smoke inhalation and that Lomer Johnson also suffered from blunt head and neck trauma, which may have been the result of a fall he took when he stepped out a second-floor window onto a roof in an attempt to save one of his granddaughters.

Johnson had apparently found one of the girls and led her to a second-floor window.

"He had actually made it outside the structure. He had gone through a window in the rear," Conte said.

Johnson apparently sat the girl on a pile of books next to the window so that he would be able to step outside and then pull her out of the house. But when he stepped out on the roof, he fell face down between two beams that had been covered with a material not strong enough to hold his weight.

"It looks like she was placed on the books so he could get her from outside," Conte said. "When he stepped out that window, his life ended."

The girl's body was later found, still sitting on the books. Another one of the children was later found on the third floor and the other was found on a second-floor stairwell landing with her grandmother.

Officials this week described the panic in the house during the fire and desperate attempts by Johnson, Badger and Borcina to save the girls.

The Stamford Fire Department released tapes on Thursday of firefighters' radio transmissions from inside the house, as reported by ABC News' New York affiliate WABC.

"We have victims trapped on the second floor, we're going to rescue mode with a ladder," a firefighter can be heard saying. "We've got a report from one of the victims, there's people in that window."

Firefighters struggled as they were repeatedly met by walls of fire in the house, forcing them back. The flames and smoke engulfing the house were too strong for them to reach the family members.

"You have heavy fire right above your head -- back out, back out!" a firefighter said. "All units on the interior, all units on the interior, back out. Back out!"

The house was torn down after being deemed unsafe by fire officials.

Morgan Johnson's full poem is printed below:


"The Nana Who Lived in a Car"

There once was a Nana who lived in a car
She traveled so very, very far
With a bunny and a G.

She traveled to places cold and hot
To where it was sunny and where it was not
With a bunny and a G

She ate and cooked foods of all different kinds
And had a very kind and pretty mind
And so did the bunny and the G

She had four granddaughters
Who loved them so
The Nana the bunny and the G

Three of them now play in Heaven
And the Nana drives them around in her car there
With a stuffed animal bunny and a G.

Riley Fitzpatrick, 7, says a prayer for the Badger family in front of 2267 Shippan Ave.

The house as it looked on google map, September 2008.