By Hector Flores
When Jason Martin, 19, woke up on New Year's Day, he heard people yelling outside his Rosemont Street home in North Bellmore. When he poked his head out the window, he saw smoke and flames billowing from a neighbor's house.
In the blaze, the 82-year-old homeowner, Christine Matsil, and her 54-year-old son David, who had Down syndrome, died, authorities said. David was bedridden and could not escape the fast-moving fire. His bedroom was right above the fireplace where the blaze started. Christine and her husband, Max, also 82, tried to lift their son from his bed, but could not. Max tried to extinguish the fire himself with water, but he was quickly overcome by smoke and ran outside. His wife, however, did not leave their son's side.
It was 11:18 a.m. when Martin spotted the fire and rushed through his house, waking up his family and relatives who were visiting for the holidays. "After I woke up my mother, brother, my aunt and my cousin, we all went outside to see what was going on," he said.
Once outside, Martin's cousin, Jasmin Frankel, 17, was overcome by grief and began to cry on Martin's shoulder, watching in horror as the Matsils' home went up in flames.
Ten minutes later, 1st Precinct police officers arrived at the Matsils' home, at 2127 Rosemont St. The North Bellmore, Bellmore, North Merrick, Merrick, East Meadow and Wantagh fire departments also responded to the blaze. Raymond Kurz, a Nassau County Arson and Bomb Squad detective, said 75 firefighters on 13 trucks were needed to quell the blaze, which was finally extinguished at 12:30 p.m.
The blaze started at about 11:15 a.m., when Max Matsil lit a fire in the fireplace on the ground floor of the two-story home. When the smoke alarm sounded, Max and Christine were reading the newspaper in their second-floor living room.
Frankel, one of the witnesses, said that firefighters apparently could not enter the house to rescue the Matsils because of the intensity of the blaze. "Two or three firefighters had to be hospitalized," she said. "One of the firefighters was lying on our lawn ... The firefighters were able to get Max out, but Christine stayed in her son's room. She just did not want to leave her son's side."
Later that day, Frankel's aunt, Robyn Martin, visited Max at the Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, where he was treated for smoke inhalation and burns on his face. "My aunt went to visit Max, and he was all cried out," Frankel said. "She said that he had come to terms with the decision his wife made to stay in the house with her son."
Mildred Falcone, a 30-year resident of Rosemont Street who lives across from the Matsils, could not believe that such a tragedy could befall such good neighbors. "They were very nice and wonderful people," she said. "I don't know what I will do without them."
Falcone added that Christine was a retired nurse and a good mother who had always taken care of David. Max, she said, was a devoted father and a courteous neighbor. "Max used to clean up our sidewalk when it would snow," Falcone said. "Every year he would be out with his machine cleaning up our sidewalk. And when our children were young, he would have gifts for them. They just loved the kids in this community."
