Mayor Bibb Had 15 Months to Take Care of 44 Families. It Took One Mother to Move Him.

One woman walked up to a microphone at Cleveland City Council and did in one testimony what City Hall had not done in fifteen months. She made Mayor Justin Bibb move.

Her name is Kyanna Bell. She lived through the Rainbow Terrace explosion in June 2025. Her children were burned. Their father died. And on September 21, she stood in that chamber and told the people who run this city, “You left us for dead.”

I watched that testimony, and then I watched the survivors who came back the next Monday. I tore up Tuesday’s RealPower Radio Show and started over.

I asked the wrong question

I’ll be straight with you. When I first listened, I kept asking what they wanted. Who were they blaming? The city? The owner? The gas company? Then I heard her answer. They want to be heard.

I missed that. So did the man with the biggest title in this city. And that is the whole story.

The Monday the survivors came back, Mayor Bibb’s administration finally released its findings. The mayor promised the city would “show up, support these families, hold people accountable, and make sure they know the city of Cleveland is with them.” Fifteen months late. Then came the bottom line: investigators could not determine what caused it. Undetermined.

“That is impossible”

Judge Michael Nelson wasn’t having it. The mayor, he said, is relying on his fire inspectors. Their answer was one word. “You cannot say there’s no determination on how the fire started,” he told our listeners. “That is impossible.” Every fire has a point of origin, and everybody agrees this was a gas explosion. Investigators rebuild crashed airplanes from wreckage scattered for miles, and they don’t quit until they know. If the local team ran out of answers, the Judge said, bring in independent experts. Don’t close the file and call it a mystery.

“You cannot say there’s no determination on how the fire started. That is impossible.”Judge Michael Nelson, The RealPower Radio Show

Then he took it further. The Judge said the building is owned by a Detroit-based company. He wants the NAACP to put displaced families on a bus and take them to that company’s front door.

“Are you willing to take that charge?” I asked him.

“Oh, yeah.”

Where’s the humanity?

Then the Judge told us the detail that stopped the room. He said one displaced mother, whose children had been hurt in the fire, got placed in a house that had itself recently burned. We have not confirmed that placement, and we’re working to. But the Judge called it what it is: “the height of insensitivity.”

Dr. Heather E. Burton went straight to the root. We have lost sight of who the work is for, she said. Too many institutions chase money and forget the people. Families knocked out of their homes by a disaster should rise to the top of every housing list in this county. And there should be an emergency fund and a trained response team ready before the next building explodes. When you’re in crisis, you hear every word differently.

We give people a sheet of paper full of phone numbers and wish them luck. A family that ran from a fire is supposed to sit there and call agency after agency, hoping somebody picks up.

DJ Unicorn spoke for a lot of this city. “Disappointed, angry, outraged, upset.” Over a year, and these families still don’t have housing or answers. She gave the city its technical defense before anybody else could: it’s a privately owned building. “But it’s the right thing to do for the people that voted you in.”

This sits on the mayor’s desk

When people say “the city failed,” they let the man in charge hide inside the building. The city didn’t fail these families. The person running the city did. That’s Mayor Justin Bibb.

“The city didn’t fail these families. The person running the city did.”Kenn Dowell

Council members pushed. Councilman Richard Starr has pressed the administration for answers. But council doesn’t run the executive branch. The mayor does. And the mayor holds the one power nobody else in this county has in the same measure: he can call everybody to the table and make them come.

The county. The state. CMHA. The neighboring cities. The agencies, churches and charities. All of them answer when the mayor calls. We are talking about 44 families. One call from the top, one room, one plan, and this gets handled in weeks, not fifteen months.

I have been doing this work for two decades. I know how a phone call changes when the right name is attached. If somebody calls a housing agency and says, “I’m calling on behalf of Mayor Bibb,” it’s a different call. He could have named one point person on day one and told them nobody goes to bed until every family is placed. We pull every group in this county into a room for bacon and eggs. The mayor could have done that for 44 families the week of the blast. The Judge added the leverage: the next time a developer comes asking for a tax credit or a bond, the answer is no until these families are taken care of. We have the resources. What we need is the will.

Now we’re watching, Mr. Mayor

Here’s what that mother already proved. One voice can move a mayor. It didn’t get her the results she came for, not yet. But it got City Hall moving. It got us talking. It got this city talking.

To every organization throwing a black-tie dinner this fall: honor somebody who solves this.

And to everybody who asks why people like her don’t vote: this is why. You can’t tell a woman who has been ignored for fifteen months that her vote matters. You have to show her. The people in these offices work for us. DJ Unicorn put it best. Stop voting for charisma. “Can you do the work?”

Register by October 5. Early voting opens October 6. Then hold every name on that ballot to the standard one mother set at a microphone.

We said our piece on the air. Now we’re watching, Mayor Bibb. We want to see how you fix it, and what you’ll do the next time.

This fight is not over, and neither is our coverage. For more stories on the people and the power moves shaping Cleveland and Black America, keep following us on RealPower.TV.

Stay Strategic. Stay Ready. Move with Purpose.