NEW YORK, January 9 – Nineteen people were killed, including nine children, and dozens were injured when a fire started by a malfunctioning space heater spread smoke through a low-income building in The Bronx borough of New York City on Sunday, city officials said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has been in office for over a week, confirmed that 19 people had died in a fire at around 11am on a 19-storey building in Twin Parks North West that provides affordable housing and a home to the Gambia community.
Earlier on Sunday, officials said 32 people were hospitalized with serious injuries and another 60 people were injured as smoke billowed from the building on a cold winter morning.
About 200 firefighters helped to put out the blaze, while others ran out of oxygen in their tanks but passed out and rescued people from the building, Adams said.
“I would like to thank them very much for putting their lives on the line to save their lives,” Adams said.
A Reuters photographer at the scene on Sunday saw paramedics perform CPR on at least eight people in front of the building. Pipe firefighters were trying to push smoke out of the building, and one of them was seen breaking a window on the upper floor to extinguish the smoke.
An NYC emergency services official said everyone who needed housing would be registered and put in hotels “for a long time” until it was safe to return to the building.
Inside the school that serves as an emergency shelter, fleeing residents were sitting at tables, wearing tight jackets and packing a few belongings. Most of the women were wearing hijabs and a few people were on the phone, including one woman who was hiding her face wrapped in a Red Cross blanket.
A distressed Gambian woman leaving a shelter due to heavy rain has told Reuters that her sister’s sister and baby were not on fire.
OWNERSHIP
The building is owned by a joint venture, Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, which is made up of three firms: LIHC Investment Group, Belveron Partners and Camber Property Group.
The building was built in 1972 as part of the government’s plan to provide affordable housing, a spokesman for the organization said. All 120 units are subject to subsidy programs, a spokesman said.
The fire alarm system appeared to be working as it was designed and the temperature was working, said a spokesman for the department.
At Angelo Patri Middle School’s temporary center Sunday evening, Frantz Sannon hurried to see his parents, who had been living on the fourth floor of the building for years.
Sannon, 45, said her parents had to leave their phones in the house because she could not find them after hearing about the fire.
“I can’t wait to talk to them right now,” he said before entering the school.
“This is a terrible, horrible, and tragic time in New York City,” Adams told reporters. “The numbers are scary.”
The fire started in an air heater in an apartment between the second and third floors of the building, and ended up in the hall, officials said.
But smoke is still spreading across the floor of the 120-unit building, probably because the apartment door was left open, city fire commissioner Daniel Nigro told reporters at a press conference.
“The members found the victims on every step of the way and they were taken out with heart disease and imprisonment,” Negro said.
Firefighters found through physical evidence and residents’ accounts that the fire came from a portable electric heater in the apartment, said Negro. He added that heat had been burning in the apartment and a portable heater had been adding to the heat.
The disaster is likely to raise questions about safety standards in low-income city homes. This was the second major fire in a U.S. residence. this week after the deaths of 12 people, including eight children, early Wednesday morning when flames passed through a public housing building in Philadelphia.
U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat whose district includes the New York building, told MSNBC that the development of affordable housing such as the Bronx One puts the safety of residents at risk. “If we allow the construction of our affordable housing to stave off decades of investment, we are putting people’s lives at risk,” he said.
Adams said most residents are from the small west African country of Gambia. The Gambian consulate in New York did not immediately respond to a request for information.
BOUND BY THE ORIGIN
The building had no means of escape from the fire, and residents had to go out through the internal stairs, Negro said. “I think some of them could not escape because of the amount of smoke,” he said.