One of those occurred on November 18, 2013.
The nightmare began with a plume of black smoke. Miashah Moses saw it rising from her building as she crossed the parking lot of London Square Apartments. Panicked, she broke into a run. Her two small nieces were inside the apartment.
She raced up the staircase to her front door, still unsure if the smoke was coming from her unit. She was shaking so badly she kept dropping her keys. Frantic, she ran next door to #718 and pounded on Tina Long’s window, screaming, “Fire! Call 911!” Tina dialed 911 and bolted out her door down the walkway to Miashah’s apartment. Neither could budge the door. Noni, 4, and Nylah, 18 months, were trapped inside. They were the children of Miashah’s younger sister, Keahmiee Moses.
Miashah, a 23-year-old African American, had only recently moved into unit #716 on the second floor of the complex and had left the apartment only a few minutes earlier to empty the trash.
Two men appeared out of nowhere and tried futilely to bust the door open. Finally, on Tina’s count, they rammed the door off its hinges. A wall of thick black smoke rolled out, and the two men lunged in, only to be driven back coughing and spewing smoke. They couldn’t see two inches in front of their faces. They tried to enter again and again, but each time were forced back by the smoke.
Tina wasn’t giving up. “I had on a really thin T-shirt, and I bunched it up as best I could over my face and I made it to the hallway. I couldn’t breathe anymore. And I started thinking of my kids and I thought, ‘I can’t die here, I’ve got kids.’” She turned and retreated.
Visibility was near zero and the heat level was approaching that of spontaneous ignition. Miashah knew where the children were and was determined to save them or die trying. She nearly did die. After several attempts to grope her way along the hallway to the bedrooms, she collapsed outside from smoke inhalation.
By this time, temperatures in the ultra-dense smoke had reached flashover. Within seconds, fifteen-foot flames were leaping out the kitchen window. “She would have gone in again had one of the guys not physically restrained her,” Tina said, “and she would have been dead along with the children.”
“I didn’t hear smoke detectors going off anywhere,” Tina said. “All I could hear was Miashah screaming, ‘My babies, my babies, get the babies!’”
Tina was kneeling over a smoke victim in the courtyard below when she caught a glimpse of the apartment maintenance worker running up the stairs, across the second-floor walkway, and throwing something that looked like a smoke detector into the burning unit. “I can’t be sure, but it was round and white and looked just like the smoke detector in my unit,” she said. “I mean, what else would he be throwing in there?”32
Fire trucks arrived within minutes, and firefighters struggled to drag the hose from the hydrant across the street some 300 feet around the full length of the building, up the back stairs, and across the walkway to #716. Several fire hydrants inside the complex had stopped working several years ago and were plugged. “I felt like it was taking forever,” Tina said. “It was probably 10 or 15 minutes just to get the hose up.”
After Miashah’s frantic call, Courtney Fletcher, her stepfather, rushed to the scene and found her on the sidewalk in the midst of firefighters, hoses, and a plethora of tenants and onlookers. Her screams of “Save my babies!” were lost in the surrounding chaos.
By this time smoke was belching from the balcony of #716 across the entire complex the length of a football field. Fire Captain Zachary Willis was parked on the side of the complex in a city SUV talking to a fireman in Engine 9 when Courtney approached his window.
“They were just standing there like nothing serious was happening,” said Courtney. “There’re two kids in that corner unit!’” he shouted, pointing to #716.
Willis appeared to be caught off guard. “At this point I was still unaware of possible victims inside the apartment,” his report states. “I had the captain from Engine 14 at the window of the car when a friend of the mother approached us stating there were kids inside the apartment.” Another fire unit had become aware and tried to radio out but was “stepped on” by another radio call.
The frightened children were just inside the window, but Fire Captain Stan May said firefighters didn’t know this and came in from the other side.33
Tina watched helplessly as firefighters emerged carrying the small limp bodies to a waiting ambulance. The girls were rushed two miles to the St. Francis Hospital emergency room.
News of the children’s death came in the harshest way. Members of the Moses family were crowded in the hospital emergency waiting room praying the girls would pull through when a uniformed stranger approached and asked the names of the children “for the coroner.”
They stared in disbelief.
2
Life in Section 8
MIASHAH and her younger sister, Keahmiee, 19, moved to London Square only two months before the fire. Miashah worked mornings at the Tulsa Transit Station, and Keahmiee worked afternoons as a housekeeper at Hillcrest Hospital. While Keahmiee worked, Miashah cared for Noni and Nylah, who by all accounts were crazy about their “Auntie Moe.”
The cramped two-bedroom apartment where the sisters lived together was Section 8 housing, subsidized housing for low-income families who live below the poverty line as Miashah and Keahmiee did. It wasn’t the Hilton, but the aging housing complex was affordable and located in a decent part of town near the scenic midtown area. Miashah and Keahmiee were close and glad finally to be out from under their parents’ roof.
Keahmiee was a petite girl with smooth, shoulder-length hair and the winsome face of a kewpie doll. Miashah was the opposite: five-foot-two, stocky, and soft-spoken with the boyish appearance of a 12-year-old, which was roughly her age when she began caring for the family babies. Between her six siblings and the extended family, there was always a baby in the house. Miashah was the one who cared for them, juggling homework and diaper changes, then jumping out of bed the next morning to make the opening bell at McKinley Elementary School. She was already making meatloaf at the age of seven.
Feeding and caring for Moses family babies became a way of life for Miashah. She babysat family children all through high school, which eventually included Keahmiee’s two children. An unwed mother at 15, Keahmiee was ill-prepared to manage a young child and, as usual, her big sister stepped in to help as she had always done. Miashah had cared for Noni and Nylah since the day they were born. It was a role she came to relish.
Photos of her at her high school graduation show a bright-eyed, exuberant girl in a cap and gown, laughing and waving to onlookers. All she wanted to do was get a job and live her life with joy. Always a tomboy, she loved shooting hoops in the driveway with her younger brother. Family gatherings at the Moses house were jubilant, with smiling Miashah outgoing and talkative, a bright light at the center of things.
Miashah Moses 2009 High School Graduation (Photo: Tulsa Public Schools)
When Keahmiee leased the London Square apartment, it seemed only natural that Miashah would move in with her and help take care of the children. “That’s all I knew, was those kids,” Miashah said. “I had been taking care of them their whole life.”
The apartment complex occupied a square block and consisted of seven two-story buildings numbered from 100 to 700, each with 20 to 30 apartments housing families of a variety of ages and ethnicities. The sisters occupied