RICH NEWBERG
WIVB
Reprinted with Permission

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. - Just before Christmas there was a heartbreaking tragedy in Cheektowaga where a father and his two daughters are found dead in a burning home.

And we've uncovered some disturbing details surrounding a 911 call made by one of the victims.

Just before Christmas there was a heartbreaking tragedy in Cheektowaga where a father and his two daughters are found dead in a burning home.

And we've uncovered some disturbing details surrounding a 911 call made by one of the victims.

Well two sisters who were UB students died in this terrible fire. Their father was a UB engineering graduate, Class of '78. Now there was a delayed response to the fire because of the way it was called in.

As the Ansari family home on Hyland Road filled with smoke, authorities believed it may have been one of the daughters inside who used her cell phone to call for help.

"It just had female screaming. It didn't say anything about a fire, so our dispatch just sent the police first because when they heard the screaming they assumed that it was a domestic incident type thing, "explained Chief Jeff Glimski of the Hy-View Vol. Fire Company.

When Cheektowaga Police arrived, they smelled smoke, tracking it to a house set back from the road. They found 60-year-old Mohammad Ansari just inside the door. They couldn't save him and they could not go further inside the house.

"My police officers are not equipped with a self-contained breathing apparatus. You've got to make good, quality decisions before you do something like that," said Cheektowaga Police Captain John Glascott.

When firefighters arrived they needed extra lines to reach inside the house. About an hour after the screaming cell call was made the bodies of 22-year-old Saaibia Ansari and 25-year-old Faaiza Ansari were reported discovered in a smoke-filled rear bedroom.

"They were in the back and there was no fire damage in the back. It was all smoke," explained Glimski.

Mohammad Ansari was a retired engineer who was known in this neighborhood for his jerry-rigged inventions, including his mailbox, which closed automatically.

Neighbor Michele Foss explained, "The mailbox is rigged. He's got it so if the kids were to leave the mailbox open in the rain, it would slowly shut."

"The best one: when he had the lawnmower on with a little cart driving down the street. He was saving gas, so he just had his funny ways," said neighbor Larry McFarland.

Clutter inside the house hampered the search for victims, according to fire officials. They found a smoke detector, but it wasn't sounding an alarm.

McFarland said, "When I seen what happened, I found out that they all were deceased, I actually sat down in the house and cried because he was a nice person, you know?"

Now another daughter and a son live out of state and the mother got the horrible news while she was in Texas. Faaiza was a medical student at UB and Saaibia was studying engineering.

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