Several more residents critically injured in Bronx disaster Mayor Bill de Blasio calls ‘one of the worst losses of life to a fire in many, many years’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

New York City’s deadliest residential fire in decades apparently began as a child played with a first-floor stove, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday. The blaze spread quickly throughout a Bronx apartment building, killing 12 people and leaving four others fighting for their lives, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday

Investigators in New York searched early on Friday for the cause of a fire that ripped through an apartment building in the Bronx, killing 12 people including an infant in the city’s deadliest blaze in at least a quarter of a century.

Police said four children were among the dead. De Blasio told CNN on Friday other people were still fighting for their lives. First responders saved at least 12 people, de Blasio said.

The New York police department said girls ages one, two and seven died, as did a boy whose age was not given.

Overnight, De Blasio spoke to reporters at the scene of the fire. He said the blaze “will rank as one of the worst losses of life to a fire in many, many years”.

“We’re here at the scene of an unspeakable tragedy,” De Blasio said. “In the middle of the holiday season is a time when families are together. Tonight, here in the Bronx, there are families that have been torn apart.”

Excluding the 9/11 attacks, it was the worst fire in New York City since 87 people were killed at a social club in the Bronx in 1990. One of New York’s deadliest fires in recent memory happened in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.

The fire broke out on the first floor of a five-storey brick building and quickly spread upstairs. “People died on various floors of the apartment, ranging in age from one to over 50,” the city fire commissioner, Daniel Nigro, said. “In a department that is surely no stranger to tragedy, we’re shocked by the lives lost.”

Two of the dead were found in a bathtub, according to cable news station NY1. “People were screaming and that’s how we knew there was trouble,” eyewitness Kimberly Wilkins told WCBS-TV. “People were screaming, ‘Fire. Help. Fire. Help.’”

The blaze erupted in the Belmont section of the Bronx, a primarily residential, close-knit neighbourhood known as the “Little Italy” of the borough, adjacent to the Bronx Zoo and Fordham University.



New York is going through a bitter cold spell with temperatures in the low-teens Fahrenheit and high winds, which according to one media account stoked flames inside the building as residents flung open doors and windows.

Citizen (@citizenapp) The massive FDNY response @ Prospect Ave & E 187th St in the #Bronx, where one fatality & multiple critical injuries have been reported. pic.twitter.com/NLD7JFuO5t

Wherever fire hoses sprayed, the ground was covered with sheets of ice, according to an NY1 reporter. More than 160 firefighters worked in bone-chilling cold, just 15 degrees, to rescue people from the building as the fire quickly spread.

Witnesses recounted their ordeal. Thierno Diallo, 59, said he was asleep in his ground-floor apartment when he heard banging on the door. He said he heard people screaming, “There’s a fire in the building!”, prompting him to run out in his bathrobe, jacket and sandals.

Ana Santiago, who lives in an adjoining building, told the New York Times she fled when she smelled the smoke and saw young girls who had escaped the fire standing on the fire escape in bare feet with no coats.

Neighbourhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, said she got out on a fire escape as another resident fled with five children. “When I got here, she was crying,” Gonzalez said.



Windows on some upper floors were smashed and blackened. “The smoke was crazy, people screaming, ‘Get out!,” a witness, Jamal Flicker, told the New York Post. “I heard a woman yelling, ‘We’re trapped, help!”

Twum Bredu, 61, arrived in the neighborhood looking for his brother, who had been staying with a family in the building. The family, a husband and wife and four children, got out. There was no word about his brother.

“I’ve been calling his phone, it’s ringing, but nobody picks up,” Bredu said. “He was in his room and we don’t know what happened.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest FDNY personnel work on the scene of an apartment fire in New York. Photograph: Amr Alfiky/Reuters

Many questions remained in the immediate aftermath of the blaze, including how the fire spread so quickly in a brick building built after catastrophic fires at the turn of the 20th century ushered in tougher enforcement of fire codes.

The building had more than 20 units. It was not new enough that it was required to have modern-day fireproofing, such as sprinkler systems and interior steel construction.

According to city records, the building had no elevator. Fire escapes were visible on the facade of the building.

The number of civilian fire fatalities in New York City last year dropped to 48, the fewest in the 100 years since record-keeping began, the fire department said on its website.