Bodies of 50 Club Fire Victims Sent Home

The bodies of 50 of the 87 people killed in a Bronx social club fire were loaded onto a cargo plane at Kennedy Airport on Saturday for a late-night flight to Honduras, a nation in mourning.

At a brief memorial service in the hangar to which the coffins had come, some in hearses, others stacked on flatbed trucks, Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch said New York would “do all possible to make sure this will never happen again.”

“These young people came to this great city of ours seeking hope and opportunity, and now they leave like this,” Lynch said, gesturing toward the long row of coffins. “The bodies lying here before us say we’ve got to do more. We’ve got to do more to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

As he spoke, police were continuing their crackdown on the hundreds of unlicensed social clubs that dot the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

Police said they visited 261 locations late Friday and early Saturday and found only 65 clubs open. They issued 29 orders to vacate the premises, 57 summonses and 80 violation notices.

Most club operators closed down before they were shut down, according to a neighborhood store owner who has supplied liquor to social clubs.

The retailer said that by Friday afternoon he had not heard from any of the clubs that normally contact him to place orders.

Because they are not licensed, social clubs cannot obtain liquor from wholesalers and must buy from retailers.

A Bronx grand jury has indicted Julio Gonzalez with murder for allegedly setting the fire that devastated the Happy Land social club a week ago.

The DC-8 scheduled to take the 50 bodies to Honduras was chartered by the American Red Cross. A spokesman said about 100 relatives of fire victims were being flown to Honduras at Red Cross expense on commercial flights.