Distraught neighbors frantically called 911 as a Christmas Day fire ravaged the Connecticut home of an advertising executive, killing her three children and parents.
In a series of calls released today, neighbors alert authorities to the early morning fire that swept through Madonna Badger’s home in Stamford.
In one of the 911 calls, an unidentified female neighbor is heard telling the 911 dispatcher, “There’s a huge fire at the house next door to us. The whole house is on fire … there’s three kids and a woman.”
She’s then disconnected but called 911 again pleading with the responder to “please, please come quickly.”
At least two other people called 911 as the inferno raged.
COURAGE OF BLAZE KIDS’ ‘GRANDFATHER CHRISTMAS’
Meanwhile, investigators said this afternoon that the appears to have been caused by hot fireplace ash that had been discarded.
“It’s been determined that sometime after 3:00[am local time], they removed hot fireplace ash and took it outside,” said Barry Callahan, Chief Fire Marshal for the city of Stamford.
Callahan told reporters at a news conference that the ashes and embers were brought to an area in the rear of the home that contained a mudroom and trash enclosure. The family went to bed between 3 am and 3:30 am, and officials received the first call reporting the blaze at 4:52 am.
Officials are still unsure of whether the home was equipped with smoke detectors.
The home’s owner, New York advertising executive Madonna Badger, and a male acquaintance escaped the Christmas morning fire. Her parents, who were visiting for the holidays, and her three daughters were killed.
Stamford Fire Chief Antonio Conte told reporters that when fire crews arrived at the scene, Badger was found on scaffolding outside the home and told rescuers that her children were on the third floor of the home. But crews who searched the floor did not find the girls.
The unbearably tragic Connecticut story of five family members who perished in a predawn Christmas fire grew more heartbreaking after The Post today revealed details of the futile heroism of the oldest victim, Lomer Johnson, of Southbury, Conn. — a silver-bearded retired liquor executive who’d worked his dream job as Saks’ jolly St. Nick only the night before.
“He had the little girl with him,” Stamford Fire Chief Antonio Conte told reporters yesterday, describing two bodies found covered in fire debris on either side of an open third-story window.
Johnson, 71, was outside, face down on a small, jutting roof. The child was just inside the window.
“I think he had his granddaughter, and he tried to get her out,” the chief said.
“He went out the window first. She was right there, and he succumbed right on the outside, and she died on the inside.
“She was right next to him.”
Johnson and his wife, Pauline, were staying in the turreted, under-renovation home visiting their daughter, a former Calvin Klein art director, and Badger’s three daughters, 10-year-old Lily and 7-year-old twins Sarah and Grace.
The condition of all three girls’ bodies left officials at a loss to immediately say which one Johnson had perished trying to save.
The other two girls were found on the second floor, one floor down from all their bedrooms, the fire chief told reporters.
“I guess the thing that bothers you the most is, if you look at our gear and you see what they wear, and how protected they are, and you think about these kids going through that house, trying to get out with pajamas on, in that intense heat, you know they had to suffer,” Conte said.
“They didn’t just go from the smoke.”
Pauline, the grandmother, was found in a staircase hall between the second and third floors.
Of the seven in the house, only Badger, a founding partner at the top-tier branding firm Badger & Winters, and her companion, contractor Michael Borcina, survived the 5 a.m. blaze.
Badger, in the early 1990s, became a top fashion marketer with her spicy Marky Mark underwear ads and sultry Kate Moss Obsession ads for Calvin Klein.
Borcina, who was doing renovation work on the $1.7 million Long Island Sound-view Victorian, remains in stable condition at a local hospital.
Firefighters told the chief that Borcina was trying desperately to re-enter the house when they arrived.
Badger was rescued from the roof as she, too, struggled past unbearable flames, heat and smoke to break a bedroom window. She was taken from the scene sobbing, “My whole life is in there.”
She was treated and released into the care of friends, according to one family acquaintance.
Borcina remained hospitalized Tuesday in stable condition, a nursing supervisor said.
Badger had moved to the mansion with her girls from Manhattan at Thanksgiving 2010.
She is estranged from her husband, the girls’ father, Matthew Badger, who still lives in lower Manhattan and who was taken to Stamford by local cops yesterday afternoon.
The mansion’s charred remains — deemed a safety hazard — were razed by the city yesterday at the conclusion of an on-site investigation and the removal of the bodies.
Autopsies would be performed today at the earliest, said an official at the state Medical Examiner’s Office.
Some 70 firefighters needed counseling after working the blaze, their chief told reporters.
The tragedy has cast a long shadow into Manhattan, where Badger had raised her girls and sent the twins to PS 3 and the elder girl to private school before moving.
At Saks and other locations where Johnson played Santa, shocked friends shared fond memories.
“He was a great guy, always joking,” an eighth-floor Saks security guard told The Post.
Johnson had written in an online entertainment booking Web site hawking his availability at $100 to $150 an hour.
“I am now a Santa because my oldest granddaughter asked me to be a pretend Santa Claus,” Johnson wrote.
“I have enjoyed it more than any job I’ve ever had.”
“He was a magnificent Santa,” who didn’t mind tots tugging at his beard, said Magdalene Shuster, a neighbor of the Johnsons’.
“Pauline said he was having a ball” playing Santa — not only at Saks, but at other jobs, including a daylong stint this season at the United Nations, Shuster added.
He and his wife were to celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary the day after the fire.
Johnson had long worked as a safety director for the Brown-Forman Corp. in Kentucky, the distillers of Jack Daniel’s.
“He spent his career trying to keep others safe,” retired Brown-Forman executive Robert Holmes Jr. said. “And the irony is that he dies in a fire.”
During Johnson’s long career with Brown-Forman, whose many brands include Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and Southern Comfort, he was responsible for security and safety at the company’s headquarters and production plants. His responsibilities included helping plan fire drills, Holmes said.
“He spent his life as a safety professional making sure our facilities were safe from fire,” Holmes said. “And in the event there was a fire, that people knew what to do in terms of getting out of the buildings.”
As for the girls, they were “just incredibly sweet and really magical,” said Sam Badger, a nephew of their father.
“Lily was a little more quiet, a little more reserved than her sisters,” he remembered.
“The twins just kind of seemed to bounce off each other, I suppose. They just seemed to be like one person, almost,” he said.
“It’s really so sad to see them all suffer this fate. This is the most tragic thing.”
With Newscore and AP.
Additional reporting Reuven Fenton, Erin Calabrese, Laura Italiano, Kevin Fascik, Christina Carrega, Yoav Gonen, Laurel Babcock, Daniel Gold and Mitchel Maddux