LOST TREASURES: The adorable Badger sisters — (from left) Lily and twins Grace and Sarah — were killed with their grandparents in a blaze that broke hearts the world over. (Facebook)
BREAKING HER SILENCE: Madonna Badger bares her torment. (Heidi Gutman/NBC)
The inferno that claimed the lives of her three daughters and parents and destroyed her home in Stamford, Conn. (AP)
Manhattan ad exec Madonna Badger helplessly cried out for her three little girls after barely escaping alive from her burning Connecticut house Christmas Day.
“Where are my kids? Where are my babies?” wailed a desperate Badger, whose face and mouth were covered in soot.
She searched frantically for her children as the inferno engulfed the Victorian home, and had to be pulled away to safety.
“They said I had to go right away,’’ the weeping mother told NBC’s Matt Lauer during her first interview since the fire, which killed all three daughters and both her elderly parents.
“I begged and begged them. There was an ambulance, and the walkie-talkies are going on, and I’m yelling at them’’ about the children, she said.
“And then, somebody said, ‘Turn off the radios! Turn off the radios!’ I knew they must’ve . . . I don’t know what happened. Something really bad,’’ said Badger, 47, her eyes puffy and red as she shook her head and broke down in tears.
“My teeth were black, and my mouth was black from the smoke,’’ said Badger, wiping her eyes with a white tissue.
“They took me away quickly because they were worried about smoke inhalation. Evidently, I don’t know, something can happen to you.”
The mother’s heart-wrenching comments to the “Today’’ co-host — released yesterday, a day after the sit-down — are part of a full interview set to air tomorrow at 10 p.m. on NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams.”
In other excerpts — obtained exclusively by The Post — Badger described how she’s been “a raw nerve” since the unspeakable happened.
“I mean, I think ‘healing’ is the only word,’’ the mom said, detailing an excruciating day-to-day struggle to survive the numbing aftermath.
“You know, my doctors . . . amazing doctors, told me that basically what had happened to me — if you could describe it physically — is that — and you know this, as a dad — is that you have these giant nerve endings that connect you to your children. And they’re big, you know?’’ she told Lauer, a father himself.
“Maybe your parents’ one now is smaller. But when a tragedy like this happens, it’s as if a knife comes and just severs those nerves, and they’re gone.
“I’m a raw nerve, basically,’’ she said. “Obviously, after six months, you know, you hope to grow the slightest bit of skin over the nerve.’’
Asked how she managed to cope at all, Badger replied, “A day at a time.
“I mean, there’s really no way — every day, I wake up and I have to remember, you know? So every day, I have to go through that day. And then another day starts. So really, it’s just one day at a time.”
The mother — who survived the inferno at her $1.7 million mansion in Stamford along with her contractor beau, Michael Borcina — tried to commit suicide about a month after the fire.
At her daughters’ funeral Jan. 5, she admitted to mourners during a eulogy, “When I used to hear about people losing a child, I would say I could never, ever, ever live through losing my babies.”
The predawn blaze began after the girls — Lily, 9, and twins Sarah and Grace, 7 — had been tucked into bed to wait for Santa.
Before they went upstairs, the children insisted Borcina clear out the smoldering fireplace so Santa wouldn’t get burned coming down the chimney.
The contractor — who was in charge of ongoing renovations at the property — then put the embers in an enclosed trash area attached to the house at around 3:30 a.m. They ignited the blaze two hours later, authorities said.
But Badger told Lauer she doesn’t blame her beau.
“I don’t believe that the ashes started the fire,” she said.
“The wind blew ashes out onto the hearth, and so we were cleaning up. I watched [Borcina] take them with his hand, the shovel, and put ’em into the bag. And then take his — I watched him put his hands in the bag . . . to make sure that there’s nothing on fire in the bag.”
“And you watched him do that?” Lauer asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Badger said.
Also killed were Badger’s dad, Lomer Johnson, 71, and her mom, Pauline Johnson, 69.
Authorities said the elderly man died trying to save one of his granddaughters.
There were no working smoke detectors in the 116-year-old house at the time, nor did it have a current certificate of occupancy.
The city razed the skeletal remains of the home — citing safety concerns — the day after the fire. That has prevented anyone from truly proving what ignited the blaze, Badger’s lawyer said in filing a notice of intent to sue Stamford earlier this month.
Badger, in her interview, said something wasn’t right about how the city handled the charred ruins of her home.
“There was no inventory done of my house, they’ve given me no inventory,’’ she said in more excerpts obtained by The Post.
“The house was torn down. They’ve taken everything. And they don’t know where it is’’ — or at least “they won’t tell me,’’ she said.
“I’ve asked them. And I don’t even know who had my house torn down. And the only reason why I know who the demo company is is because I have photographs of . . . their bulldozer.
“They didn’t keep anything forensically out of my house, not one fire alarm, not a smoke alarm, not an electrical panel, not the electric meter itself. I have nothing,” said Badger, famous for helping to create the iconic Calvin Klein underwear ads featuring Marky Mark in the ’90s.
Badger went so far as to suggest the city was criminal in its actions.
“I think from everything that everyone has told me, it’s very odd. I think it’s a crime. I don’t understand how that could have happened,’’ she said.
“I mean, it — within 24 hours, to tear down my house, to take away — I mean, no one can go in and investigate. Nobody can know what actually happened.”
Badger’s ex-husband and the girls’ dad, Matthew Badger, also has filed an intent to sue the city.
He has scheduled a fund-raiser, “Lily Sarah Grace on Broadway,” tomorrow at the New Victory Theatre.
It will benefit the nonprofit set up in his kids’ names to benefit arts programs in schools.