3 members of Indian-origin family killed in New York fire
Darpan News Desk IANS, 21 Jun, 2022 10:54 AM
New York, June 20 (IANS) An Indian-origin couple and their son have been killed in a house fire in the city, according to media reports.
WPIX TV station reported that the house was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived there on Friday afternoon and found two bodies in a basement flat.
Firefighters found the third body the next day, it said.
The New York Post, quoting neighbours and relatives, identified the couple as Nanda Balo Persaud and Bono Salima 'Sally' Persaud.
The body of their son Devon Persaud, 22, was found only the next day.
The incident was classified by officials as a "five-alarm fire" which spread to four other houses fanned by strong wind gusts, WPIX reported.
It reported that 29 adults and 13 children from nine families were affected by the fire while many firefighters were injured.
New York Post said that according to the relatives, Nanda Persaud retired from a company that makes medicines while his wife worked at the JFK Airport.
An online fundraiser for the family on Gofundme raised $34.923 from 429 donations as of Monday morning.
Salima Persaud's cousin Abid Ali, who organised the fundraiser, wrote, "They were a family who worked hard and came from a humble background."
"They were always so welcoming, treated everyone like family, and always tried their best to put a smile on everyone's faces," he wrote.
According to him, many of their family members are in Guyana.
Their house is located in the city's Queens borough in a neighbourhood with many families of Indian descent who immigrated from Guyana.
According to the Embassy, following the meeting of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on March 25, the Chinese side has expressed its willingness to consider facilitating the return of Indian students to China on a need-assessed basis.
The person tested positive for the avian influenza A (H5) virus and was involved in the culling of poultry presumed to have had H5N1 bird flu, Xinhua news agency quoted the CDC as saying on Thursday.
US Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for Covid-19 on undergoing rapid and PCR tests, her spokesperson said. Harris, 57, has not been a close contact to US President Joe Biden or the first lady "due to their respective recent travel schedules," the statement said.
"Twitter's become very boring. They've gotten rid of a lot of good voices on Twitter, a lot of their conservative voices," he said. Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat following the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.
The Chaoyang district reported 26 cases over the weekend, the highest number so far in Beijing's latest surge, said the BBC report. All 3.5 million residents in Chaoyang, Beijing's most populous district, will undergo three rounds of mass testing, according to a notice by the city's disease prevention team.
He was in the final year of high school and had been set to study criminal justice at a local university. On Friday evening, the temperatures were down to about 12 degrees Celsius in New Milford, which is about 35 km from New York City.
