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Keystone / AP Photo / Yuki Iwamura
The fire broke out on a lower floor, then deadly smoke spread throughout the high-rise. A number of children also die in one of the worst fires in New York. Survivors tell of their escape.
At least 19 people died in one of the deadliest fires in New York’s recent history in the Bronx borough – nine of them were children. “The numbers are terrible,” said Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke of a “tragedy”. It is believed that the death toll could rise further given more than 60 injuries, most of them life-threatening. Fire chief Daniel Nigro called the cause of the fire a broken electric heater.
“It started with a defective electric space heater,” says Nigro. “The fire has spread throughout the apartment, which extends over two floors.” In addition, the door of the apartment at the bottom of the building was left open, allowing deadly smoke to spread throughout the 19-story building. The people were trapped in their apartments or in the stairwell by smoke. Firefighters found victims on every floor, many with severe smoke inhalation.
One of the residents of the building told how he heard people fleeing shouting “help, help, help”. While his children were unharmed, his neighbor’s children were killed in the fire. He usually takes them all to school every morning, but this will never happen again. “What am I going to tell my children now?” he said through tears. “Tomorrow is a school day, they will ask me where their friends are.”
Image:
Keystone/AP/Jeenah Moon
“We couldn’t do anything”
Dilenny Rodriguez described hearing children scream. She herself was in her apartment when she saw the smoke. She and her daughter waited in the bedroom until firefighters finally knocked on the door and went down the stairs with them. “The bad thing was when we went down the stairs and we saw a body and dead dogs. There was nothing we could do,” she said. She mourns her neighbors. “Everyone had their family here in the building.”
The fire broke out on Sunday morning (local time) on a cold, wet New York winter day. After a large-scale operation by around 200 firefighters, it was extinguished in just a few hours. Videos on social media showed images of thick smoke billowing through shattered windows. Firefighters used ladders to get residents out of the home. According to Mayor Adams, firefighters continued to search for survivors even after they had run out of oxygen.
Hours after the fire in the heart of the Bronx, the scene of the accident was still illuminated by blue lights. Hundreds of police, fire brigade and special teams continued to search for clues. An adjacent school was opened for the fire victims to provide housing for the now homeless. The building is a block of flats for socially disadvantaged families with adjusted rents. The Bronx is the poorest borough of New York, with residents earning well below the average for the US east coast metropolis.
Twelve dead in Philadelphia fire
The accident marks one of the worst fires in New York’s recent history. In 1990, a fire at the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx killed 87 people. The fire was attributed to arson.
Twelve people, including eight children, died in a fire in an apartment building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. The fire broke out on the middle floor of a three-story apartment building.
SDA
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