By Julie Wernau
Published on 12/28/2006 TheDay.com

Waterford— In several telephone calls, Edwina “Sue” Naholnik's 11-year-old grandson told her their house was full of smoke. He begged his grandmother to come home, sobbing as he, his 10-year-old sister and 7-year-old cousin — all home alone — waited to find out what to do.

“I'm scared,” the boy said. “I'm really scared.”

His sister got on the phone and said that there was a fire in her grandmother's bedroom, that “there was light everywhere,” and that it was too smoky to open the door.

“Tell mommy to come fast,” she said.

Nearly 18 minutes passed before Naholnik called 911, according to information Waterford police pieced together from recorded phone calls. Police said she was afraid they would find out that her three young grandchildren had been left home alone overnight.

Now Sue Naholnik, 51, and her daughter, Brandi M. Naholnik, 29, are facing criminal charges stemming from the Nov. 30 fire, which destroyed the house the Naholniks rented at 69 Ridgewood Ave. The children were not injured.

In recorded phone calls among Naholnik, her three grandchildren and her daughter on the morning of the fire, she did not tell her grandchildren to leave the house but instead told them to wait until their mother arrived.

The calls were recorded because they were made to and from the Pfizer Inc. emergency dispatch center, according to police, where Sue Naholnik works nights, as well as to Waterford's emergency dispatch center, when Naholnik eventually called to report smoke in the house.

Sue Naholnik, of Waterford, and Brandi Naholnik, of New London, were charged Wednesday with three counts of risk of injury to a minor and three counts of first-degree reckless endangerment. Sue Naholnik was also charged with second-degree falsely reporting an incident and interfering with an officer, and Brandi Naholnik was charged with making a false statement in the second degree.

Both women appeared in court Wednesday and are being held on $150,000 bond.

“Mom! Mom, did you tell them to get out of the house?” Brandi Naholnik asked her mother 14 minutes after the 11-year-old called his grandmother, according to arrest warrants.

“I want you there before the fire department gets there, please,” Sue Naholnik tells her daughter in the same call.

By the time the fire department arrived at 69 Ridgewood Ave. during the early hours of Nov. 30, flames were shooting out of every window and door, Goshen Fire Department member Thomas Dembek told police.

The house was destroyed in the fire, and the family lost their pets, a chihuahua, three ferrets and three lizards. Brandi Naholnik told The Day they had no renter's insurance.

Chief of Police Murray Pendleton said that Brandi Naholnik originally told police she was sleeping when the fire broke out. Police said Sue Naholnik told them her daughter had called from her house to say there was smoke.

In a written statement to Fire Inspector Jeffrey Lathrop, Brandi Naholnik said she woke up and saw smoke and an “orange flame in the corner,” jumped up, closed the door behind her and ran for the children's room. In her statement, she said she grabbed the children, took them across the street to a neighbor, then went back twice for the animals.

But a neighbor across the street told police that when Brandi Naholnik brought the children over, they were “black” with soot and coughing.

“It could have been much more tragic if the children didn't wake up,” said Detective Sgt. Michael Hurley, who heads up the detective division.

Police said they later learned that Brandi Naholnik's two children and her 7-year-old niece were left home alone at their grandparents' house, unsupervised, and that both grandparents work nights full time — Sue Naholnik at Pfizer and William Naholnik at the Holiday Inn in New London.

Brandi Naholnik's two children live with their grandparents, and their 7-year-old cousin stays over occasionally because her father, Jon Michael Naholnik, works nights at Dominion Nuclear.

Police said both women turned themselves in.

The cause of the fire is still undetermined, Pendleton said, but preliminary reports indicate there was an electrical problem.

j.wernau@theday.com