A CT woman’s ‘life just shattered’ when her twin died in a house fire. Could it have been prevented?

Five years after her twin brother died in a fire in a rooming house, Clarice Elerabi feels like “half of me is now gone.”

Michael Randall Sr. died May 5, 2019, at 150 West St. in the Hill neighborhood of New Haven, in what Elerabi’s lawyer claims was an illegal rooming house. Randall and another man who died in the fire, Corey Reed, lived on the third floor, where two apartments had been added.

Lawsuits against the city of New Haven, which go to trial this month, contend that the house was only permitted to have five bedrooms, but that two bedrooms had allegedly been illegally added, with only one way to get out of the third floor.

“I received a phone call that there was a fire in my brother’s, where he lives,” Elerabi said. “And I’m thinking, Oh, it’s OK. I’m sure he got out.”

She tried calling, but there was no answer.

“My brother was saving people and trying to help the little ones with sheets and ropes to get them out of the building,” she said. “And one young lady, Kathy, he actually had to help her jump from the window. Unfortunately, the windows were too small and he just could not get out the windows, and there was no other way for him to escape.”

Elerabi went to the hospital to try to find her brother but no one would disclose the names of those who had been brought there (three firefighters were injured in the fire, in addition to Randall’s and Reed’s deaths).

Elerabi went back to the scene and the fire marshal “brought me over to the ambulance, and there was a body in there and he just wanted me to identify the body. I went in. It was my brother,” she said. “My whole life just shattered right there.”

“It was the worst day of my life, the worst day of my life,” she said. “They took my twin away. They took my other half away. I’ll never be able to have dinner, lunch or (see) his smile or conversate with him again. I’ll never be able to have family outings with him again.”

According to the lawsuits, the city Fire Department had received a complaint on Feb. 7, 2019, about the allegedly illegal apartments and it had referred the complaint to the Livable City Initiative , which enforces the city housing code.

LCI then entered the building on Feb. 11 and noted the alleged lack of smoke detectors and “determined ‘that the owner did not have a rooming license,’” the lawsuits state.

Elerabi, 48, who lives in Windsor, said she was recently sitting on the New Haven Green, “because that was one of my brother’s happy places. So I had some smiles and some grief and some sadness going on thinking about him.

“And as I was walking away, dead smack in front of me, the mayor is walking my way; I’m walking his way. … And I had to stop him, introduce myself and explain who I am to him and why I was down on the Green and what happened to my brother five years ago.”

Elerabi said she knows Justin Elicker wasn’t mayor at the time of the fire, and said, “He has a lot of things going on with the city, and he’s trying to take care of it. And he hires people to take care of it and do their jobs. And in my brother’s case, that job was not done correctly.

“He shook my hand as I introduced myself and as I’m holding his hand is when I’m explaining everything, he apologized to me,” she said. “Great, you know, he’s terribly, terribly sorry for everything that happened and he is doing his best to make change. And I said, I understand you’re trying to make change but … my brother’s anniversary is going to be five years and I just feel as if the city is not taking this serious.”

“While the fire predates my time as mayor, what happened to Mr. Randall is a tragedy, and I was grateful for the opportunity to speak with his sister and to convey my condolences for her family’s loss,” Elicker said in a statement.

“Given the pending trial, I can’t comment on the specifics of the case,” he said. “However, the City always participates in the legal process in good faith, and ensuring affordable, safe, high-quality housing has been and will continue to be a top priority for my administration.”

Born April 12, 1975, “it was me and Michael,” Elerabi said. “We shared a room together. We did everything together. We got in trouble together. We snuck in the kitchen and we tried to cook by ourselves together and I burnt my hand really bad. I’ll never forget that.

“But he’s the oldest one and he’s the big brother because he was born a few minutes before me,” she said. “He took care of me when we were younger. We did a lot of fun things that normal kids do. We got in trouble. We had a lot of fun.”

Elerabi said she’s been trying to cope the last five years with meditation and therapy.

“I’m trying hard to get myself back together and pick it up. But unfortunately, it was the city of New Haven dragging this out for five years. It feels like it’s never going to be put behind me,” she said.

Elerabi’s daughter, Brianna, who didn’t want her last name used, said of her uncle, “Whenever I was going through things in my personal life, he was definitely always somebody that I can rely on, somebody that I can call. He was genuine. He had the biggest heart. He was very spontaneous.”

The wrongful-death lawsuits allege that LCI failed to request an inspection of 150 West St. by the fire marshal, failed to revoke the certificate of occupancy and failed to ensure that smoke detectors were installed.

J. Craig Smith of Koskoff Koskoff and Bieder , who is representing the plaintiffs, said there were two calls to the city complaining about 150 West St., in 2017 and 2019.

“They never performed the inspection to insure themselves that it was in fact an illegal rooming house,” Smith said. “And had they done that, they would have seen and would have known that there was only one means of egress, a small attic stairwell (for) the folks that lived on the third floor of that building. That otherwise the only means they had of escaping in the event of a fire was through a small attic window.”

Smith said Randall had had knee surgery recently and couldn’t get down the stairs and the fire broke out in the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs.

“He and Corey Reed were trapped. And it absolutely would not have happened had the city of New Haven done its job, either the Fire Department or LCI,” Smith said.

“If they had just simply done an investigation and inspection, they would have seen it was an illegal rooming house with no proper means of egress for the folks living in that attic, and they would have vacated and found someplace else for those folks to live, which is their duty under the law,” Smith said.

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com .