The five members of an Orthodox Jewish family who died from the fire in their apartment in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta they were dismissed with a religious ceremony at the temple and the Jafetz Jaim school of religious studies, and then buried in a cemetery in Lomas de Zamora.
Meanwhile, according to the preliminary results of the skills carried out on the scene, the fire would have originated in “the sudden thermal reaction of lithium batteries belonging to an electric skateboard scooter”.
“The entire Argentine Republic is distressed,” said one of the rabbis who led the collective prayers in tribute to Sofia Kabudi, 49, and her children Rafi Jabbaz, 3; Orly Jabbaz, 7; Esther Jabbaz, 9, and Camila, 17, died from the fire registered on Thursday on the seventh floor of the Ecuador 1062 building.
The father of the family, Isaac Jabbaz, 55, continued to be hospitalized in a reserved state at the Sanatorio Anchorena, in the Buenos Aires town of San Martín, after having suffered burns to his face and conditions in his respiratory system while trying to rescue his family. .
The president of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), Jorge Knoblovits, dozens of members of the community Jewess and neighbors of the neighbourhood.
“The community is destroyed,” summed up a member of the temple, a situation that was evident in the faces of sadness and regret of those who attended the ceremony.
The weight of the silence that accompanied the climate of anguish of the attendees was only interrupted by the rabbinic psalms that led the collective prayer and, when members of the Jabbaz family arrived, many could not contain their tears.
The rabbi said that the mother of the family “had 11 children, she was an example.”
The funeral procession left shortly before 12:30 p.m. for a funeral home in Rivadavia at 10,000, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Luro, where the ritual of washing the bodies was carried out, to later go to the Bene Emeth Sephardic Jewish Cemetery, of the town of Banfield, in the south of the Buenos Aires suburbs.
The washing of the bodies of the deceased, in Jewish customs and rituals, is a symbol of purification.
On the other hand, sources from the Prosecutor’s Office told Télam that the preliminary autopsy reports will be available between late tonight and tomorrow morning.
Fedullo indicated that the state of health of the father of the family, who was injured in the fire, “is delicate”, so they await his recovery so that he can testify in the case.
The prosecutor will also take witness statements from people affected by the incident once they recover.
However, he said that the strongest hypothesis indicates that it was an accidental event.
The fire that caused the death of a woman and four of her children and affected another 30 people was recorded yesterday shortly before 6 in the living room on the seventh floor of the Recoleta building and spread rapidly throughout the house and the apartment of the upstairs.
According to the preliminary results of the skills of the Fire and Explosions Office of the City Fire Department, the fire would have originated in “the sudden thermal reaction of lithium batteries belonging to an electric skateboard scooter.”
This reaction would have been induced “by overload or excessive discharges, hits in cells or exposure to heat sources” and that thermal potential “was transmitted to the elements with the capacity to burn” which gave rise to the fire, as reported.
Prosecutor Sebastián Fedullo confirmed that “the origin of the fire was the lithium batteries of a skateboard that was in the living room” and said that “there could be several causes” that explain this reaction, although he ruled out that the batteries had exploded.
“Sometimes an effect is generated as if it were a flare, which produces a flame that then spreads; it may have been due to overload, exposure to the sun, internal failure, but that will be determined by the skills,” he considered.
Regarding the cause of death of Kabudi and his four children, prosecutor Fedullo said that “a priori it is presumed that they were due to inhalation of carbon monoxide”, although he asked to wait for the autopsy reports to confirm that hypothesis as final. .
In the expert report it was established that it is a building of modern date, made up of a structure of bearings, perimeter walls and partition walls of bricks settled in a mixture of masonry and a flat covering of slab, made up of a ground floor and 13 upper floors, intended for entirely to housing apartments.
“The investigation focused on the interior of an apartment on the seventh floor that covers the entire plane, which is made up of a living-dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a laundry room,” explained judicial sources.
And, they added that “it was possible to verify the concretion of a generalized cutting combustive process in the environment destined to living-dining room, whose approximate measurements are 6.00 x 4.00 x 2.80 meters high, which is located in the middle part, left side (seen from the public road)”.
Finally, the prosecutor said that a group of registered experts went this morning to check the 14-story building and that the residents will be able to return to their apartments once “Edenor and Metrogas enable the services.”
Meanwhile, members of the Jewish community carry out a solidarity collection to raise funds for the restoration of the Jabbaz family’s home.
“This campaign aims to raise money to help the Jabbaz family who have suffered a terrible tragedy,” said Rabbis Uriel Husni and Yosef Dlin, organizers of the collection.
For those who want to donate, you can go to https://www.donacion.ar/fliajabbaz/
