At least seventeen people, including eight children, died on Sunday and about sixty were injured in a massive fire in a building in New York’s Bronx neighborhood, “one of the worst” in the megacity’s recent history, the mayor of the city announced. , Eric Adams.
The fire was caused by a superheater, the city fire chief said. Investigators “determined on the basis of material clues and early testimonies from residents that the fire broke out from a bedroom and auxiliary heating,” said Daniel Nigro, during a release point at the foot of this building. HLM type in this huge working-class district building.
The toll, initially nineteen dead, including nine children, has been revised downwards, Mayor Adams announced, who said Monday that “nine adults and eight children” have lost their lives.
According to firefighters, victims were found on every floor of the 19-story brick building, with smoke rising to the top of the building when the fire broke out in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors.
“This will be one of the worst fires in our history. We know we have 19 people dead and many more in critical condition and more than 63 people injured, ”said Mr. Adams who lives on site.
The new mayor of New York, a former African American police officer took office on 1is January, spoke of a “real tragedy, not just for the Bronx and the city”.
In the first images circulated on social networks Sunday morning, huge flames and thick black smoke escaped from a window of a multi-story building in the Bronx, a huge working-class neighborhood in upstate New York.
” Chaos “
George King, a resident of a nearby building, told AFP of a scene of “chaos”: “I’ve lived here for 15 years, this is the first time I’ve seen such a thing. He said that “he saw smoke, many panicked people” and that “no one wanted to jump out of the building”.
One inhabitant at 11And building floor, Miguel Enrique testified to AFP, saying he was “asthmatic” and barely had time to “grab a coat and get off the elevator” because the corridor was black with smoke.
The New York firefighters, called to the scene around 11 (local time), had initially announced a toll of about thirty injured and had the disaster under control in two hours.
Two hundred firefighters intervened on this HLM-type building. Many windows were broken, probably by residents trying to avoid asphyxiation.
According to New York fire chief Daniel Nigro, on the spot, the fire broke out in a duplex apartment “on the second and third floors”. The firefighters “found themselves in front of the fire in the corridors: a lot of smoke, a very heavy fire,” he said.
Mr. Nigro explained that “the smoke spread over the entire height of the building, which is absolutely unusual” and that his firefighters “found victims on every floor and were evacuating them in cardiac and respiratory arrest” .
“Horrible day”
“It is truly a heartbreaking day for us,” insisted Mayor Eric Adams, a centrist Democrat elected on an agenda to fight crime and economic and social inequality in New York.
On Wednesday, a terrible fire in a Philadelphia apartment building killed twelve people, including eight children.
And in this same Bronx neighborhood, in December 2017, a fire killed twelve people including four children, the most serious in the city’s 25 years. It was caused by a three and a half year old boy playing with a gas stove.
New York, a megacity of nine million inhabitants, suffers in various neighborhoods of an immense housing crisiswith buildings sometimes dilapidated and poorly maintained.
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