At least seventeen people, including eight children, died on Sunday and around sixty were injured in an impressive fire at a building in the Bronx neighborhood of New York, “one of the worst” in the recent history of the megalopolis, announced the mayor of the city, Eric Adams.
The fire was caused by a booster heater, the city’s fire chief said. The investigators “determined on the basis of material clues and the first testimonies of residents that the fire started from a bedroom and an auxiliary heating”, declared Daniel Nigro, during a point release at the foot of this HLM-type building in this immense working-class district.
The toll, initially of nineteen dead, including nine children, has been revised downwards, announced Mayor Adams, who said Monday that “nine adults and eight children” had lost their lives.
Victims were found on each floor of the 19-storey brick building, with smoke rising to the top of the building as the fire started in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors, according to the firefighters.
“This is going to be one of the worst fires in our history. We know that we have 19 people dead as well as several others in critical condition, and more than 63 people injured, “said Mr. Adams live on the spot.
New York’s new mayor, an African-American former police officer who took office on 1is January, spoke of a “true tragedy, not just for the Bronx and the city.”
In the first images circulating Sunday morning on social networks, huge flames and thick black smoke escaped from a window of a multi-story building in the Bronx, a huge working-class neighborhood in northern New York.
« Chaos »
George King, a resident of a neighboring building, told AFP of a scene of “chaos”: “I have lived here for 15 years, this is the first time I have seen something like this. He said he “saw smoke, a lot of panicked people” and that “no one wanted to jump off the building”.
An inhabitant at 11e floor of the building, Miguel Enrique, testified to AFP, saying he was “asthmatic” and had just enough time to “take a coat and go down the elevator” because the hallway was black with smoke.
The New York firefighters, called to the scene around 11 a.m. (local time), had initially announced a toll of around thirty injured and had brought 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 started in a duplex apartment “on the second and third floors”. The firefighters “found themselves facing the fire in the hallways: a lot of smoke, a very heavy fire,” he said.
Mr Nigro explained that “the smoke extended the full height of the building, which is totally unusual” and that his firefighters “found victims on each floor and were evacuating them in cardiac and respiratory arrest. “.
“Horrible day”
“It really is an excruciating day for us,” insisted Mayor Eric Adams, a centrist Democrat elected on an agenda to tackle crime and economic and social inequality in New York.
Last Wednesday, a terrible fire in an apartment building in Philadelphia killed twelve people, including eight children.
And in this same district of the Bronx, in December 2017, a fire had killed twelve people including four children, the most serious in 25 years in the city. It had been caused by a three-and-a-half-year-old child who was playing with a gas stove.
New York, a megalopolis of nine million inhabitants, suffers in various neighborhoods from a huge housing crisis, with sometimes dilapidated and poorly maintained buildings.
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