UNION CITY -- Three days after a fire in Union City claimed the life of a 2-year-old boy and destroyed several apartments and the steeple of a nearby church, local, state and federal investigators continued to search for a cause, authorities said Tuesday.
Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said the Saturday morning fire was being probed by fire investigators from her office, the Union City Police Department, the New Jersey State Fire Marshals Office and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms.
On Monday, Union City Police Chief Richard Molinari said the fire was believed to have started inside the three-story building at 1404 Summit Ave., where 2-year-old Eddie Gonzalez Jr. perished in the blaze and his father, Eddie Sr., was badly burned rescuing another one of his children and trying to save his young son.
The father remained in critical but stable condition in St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston on Tuesday, Suarez said.
She said the ATF's National Response Team would work with local investigators to reconstruct the fire scene in an effort to determine precisely where the fire started and how.
Suarez said the response team would provide state-of-the-art equipment and expert personnel, including special agents certified as fire investigators, forensic chemists, fire protection engineers, electrical engineers, forensic mapping specialists, and accelerant detection canine teams.
"With their help, we hope to provide a proper and timely conclusion to this investigation for the sake of the community," Suarez said.
Union City Mayor Brian Stack said the boy's funeral would be held Friday at the Leber Funeral Home on Kennedy Boulevard.
"Nothing will erase the pain of this tragedy, but hopefully the collective investigative effort will provide some answers and help to bring some closure," Stack said.
On Monday, Stack criticized the failure of the area's regional fire department, North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, to extinguish the steeple of Saints Joseph and Michael Church, which was ignited by embers from the burning apartments that were carried more than a block by high winds.
Stack said he arrived at the scene at 1:25 a.m., and urged a North Hudson commander to attack the church fire. But, he said, it wasn't until well after 2 a.m. that water was finally poured on the flames, and only then by the volunteer Secaucus Fire Depatment that was assisting North Hudson.
A spokesman for North Hudson defended the response, noting that firefighters faced adverse conditions including the cold, high winds, low water pressure and the risk that the steeple would collapse, which it did after being engulfed in flames.
Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark, which owns the church, said on Tuesday that no determination had been made about how long it would take to repair the roof and rebuild the steeple, or even whether the work would be done and Saints Joseph and Michael reopened.
The head of the diocese, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, visited the church on Saturday. On Monday Tobin said displaced priests would take up residence at St. Anthony of Padua Parish, and Masses would be celebrated at Mother Seton School on New York Avenue and at Veterans Memorial School, a public elementary school just across 14th Street.
Officials said the Red Cross is providing hotel rooms for the 40 residents who lost their homes in the fire, which damaged or destroyed 15 apartments. Stack said the city would continue to pick up the cost of housing for an additional two weeks after that, and is already looking for permanent homes.
Suarez urged anyone with information, photographs or video footage of the fire to contact Union City Police at 201-348-5790 or her office at 201-915-1345.
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.