13 dead, including seven children, in building fire in Philadelphia

Thirteen people, including seven children, have died in a fire affecting a small social housing building in central Philadelphia, one of the deadliest residential fires in recent US history.

“This is without a doubt one of the most tragic days in our city’s history, the loss of so many people in such a tragic way,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said during a press point on site.

At his side, a representative of the firefighters, Craig Murphy, spoke of a “terrible toll”, referring to “one of the worst fires” for him in 35 years of exercise.

Firefighters arrived at the scene at 6:40 am (11:40 am GMT) and had to deal with “an intense fire originating from the second floor of a house” which has three. “It took 50 minutes to bring the fire under control,” they said.

The tragic fire took place in the central and residential neighborhood of Fairmont, home to the great museums of Philadelphia, in a small building owned by the city and affiliated with Federal Social Housing.

“According to my parishioners, the people who live there are rather people who need help,” the priest of a nearby Ukrainian Catholic church, Ruslan Borovyi, told AFP. “It’s a great tragedy, we are going to have a prayer tonight and we are going to see how we can help them,” he added.

– An open investigation –

The building sits in the middle of a row of small houses, along a block with brick facades, typical of some American cities. Several windows, from which the firefighters’ ladders come out, are completely blackened there, as well as part of the roof.

Firefighters have announced the opening of an investigation to determine how the fire started, why it spread so quickly and left the victims no chance. According to Craig Murphy, “there were four smoke detectors but none worked.” He added that a “very large number of people” lived in only two homes, assuring that eight people had managed to escape the flames and two others had been hospitalized.

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For its part, the Philadelphia housing agency assured that the building had been inspected in May 2021 and that at the time, all the detectors were working.

“We cannot pass judgment on the number of people who lived in this building,” added the mayor, suggesting that, “perhaps, there were members of these families who needed to be there. shelter”.

The death toll is one of the deadliest for Philadelphia, a large city in Pennsylvania and the sixth most populous in the United States (approximately 1.5 million inhabitants). In 2008, seven immigrants died after the explosion of a kerosene heater in a small brick building.

In December 2017, a fire in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City killed 12 people including four children, the worst in 25 years in the city. It had been provoked by a three-and-a-half-year-old child playing with a gas stove.

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