City Details Bronx Fire Response

Mayor Bloomberg's office has released a detailed report of the steps the city took in the wake of a deadly fire in the Bronx, a move that seems designed to assuage critics who said the mayor should not have left the city after the blaze.

The complaints about Mr. Bloomberg's trip to Miami to tour green buildings and examine energy-efficient transportation the day after the fire, which claimed the lives of nine children and one woman, are the latest in a series of criticisms of his handling of recent problems. Among them are his initial refusal to suspend alternate side parking rules after a snowstorm last month, his delayed visit to Queens during the blackout last summer, and his support for recent school bus route changes, which left some students stranded in the cold.

The 1,113-word report issued by the mayor's Community Assistance Unit commissioner, Patrick Brennan, states that Mr. Bloomberg's staff members arrived at the scene of the fire early Thursday morning shortly after a taxi driver whose wife and four children died in the blaze, Mamadou Soumare, arrived home from work, "unaware as to the events that transpired." It includes details of the work the mayor's office and other city agencies undertook over the next few days.

Governor Spitzer met with relatives of the 10 victims yesterday and told the Associated Press they were "rightly inconsolable."

"When you look into the eyes of the father, aunts, children who have survived, who are related, and see the tears flowing, it's impossible not to share their sense of grief," he said.

Mr. Bloomberg will attend a funeral today at the Islamic Cultural Center in the Bronx for members of the Magassa and Soumare families who died in the fire.