Bloomberg, Ever a Businessman, Struggles to Comfort After Fire

NEW YORK (AP) -- A day after a woman and eight children died in New York City's deadliest fire in nearly 20 years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg found himself in a familiar struggle: He is expected to be comforting, but his businesslike style gets in the way.

Asked Friday about the criticism he was getting for traveling to Miami after the fire, the billionaire Republican was matter-of-fact.

"There's a lot of things to do at the same time, and I know people say, 'Oh, you should stop everything,' but you know, you have to do them all,'' he said on his weekly radio show. ``There are times you cancel, but I made sure everybody was there, doing what was right.''

"On to the next thing,'' he added.

During his trip to Miami, he met with Mayor Manny Diaz and had private sit-downs with potential donors for the multimillion dollar World Trade Center memorial, raising a half-million dollars in one meeting. At one public appearance, Bloomberg even cracked a spring break joke, saying he and Diaz were "thinking about doing a movie in South Beach: 'Mayors Gone Wild.'''

Asked by reporters in Miami why he did not cancel his trip because of the fire, Bloomberg said he had other things to do, and grew testy after the questions persisted. He would not say when he planned to return to New York City, but ended up flying back late that night.

Bloomberg did not visit the neighborhood of the fire on Thursday. But before he left for Florida, he held a news conference in midtown and briefed reporters about it.

In the Bronx community Friday, where neighbors were mourning the loss of the popular family from the west African nation of Mali, some said they felt slighted that the mayor left town and did not pay his respects immediately.

"He should have stayed, because people died here,'' said Elizabeth Matos, who lived next door to the house where the fire erupted late Wednesday night. Fire officials said an overloaded space heater was the cause.

After his radio show Friday morning, Bloomberg went to the neighborhood and met for nearly an hour with the relatives of the victims, some of whom said they actually appreciated that he waited a day until all of the family members could get there from overseas.

Stopping by a firehouse afterward, he said "it is time to pull together'' and pointed out the tragic story of the immigrant community.

"Most of whom came to New York, came to the United States to pursue the great American dream, and now find themselves sharing a great American tragedy with us,'' he said.

But in times like these, Bloomberg tends to convey his own belief that there is little use in dwelling on what can't be changed. Over the years, it has been perceived by some -- like a group of Sept. 11 victims -- as coldness.

Last month, after drivers all over the city were outraged that parking rules were upheld during a winter snowstorm, resulting in thousands of tickets on all the stuck cars, Bloomberg said everyone was just being lazy.

"I don't like to get up early in the morning and have to do anything either -- I'd like to sleep in, too.''

And when parents were upset about new school bus routes introduced midyear, sending families scrambling to change their routines, he waved it off as overdramatic.

Those who know him say he is just being pragmatic. Never one to obsess about the past, the former CEO doesn't focus on the feelings about the problem, but what everyone is doing to solve it.

During a blackout last summer that left thousands of Queens residents without power for days, he ridiculed reporters for asking why he didn't visit the neighborhood right away.

There are, he retorted at the time, "people all over this city who would like to have me come and talk to them.''

"Me being out there is nice and I'd like to do it, but more important than having a photo op, I'm trying to make sure that we get the resources the city can provide,'' he said.

And on Friday, he turned the tragic events of this week into a lesson about fire safety. A news conference was set up at a firehouse, where he and the city's top fire officials warned residents about the importance of keeping fresh smoke detector batteries.

"While there's nothing I can say that will bring back the children that were lost, the fact of the matter is, in their memory, what we can do is to resolve that nobody else dies,'' he said.

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