The fire declared this Sunday in a residential building The Bronx that caused at least 19 deaths, including nine children, most likely originated in a electric stove that lit the fire, the flames spreading rapidly because the apartment door was left open.
The chief of the New York Fire Department, Dan Nigro, said at a press conference at the scene that this is the most likely hypothesis of this fire, the gravest in recent New York history.
For his part, Mayor Eric Adams noted that Among the victims there could be numerous Gambians, as this is an area of the Bronx where this African community is the majority, and promised that everyone will have a burial according to Muslim ritual and respecting their traditions.
At the moment, the figures of 19 dead (9 of them minors) and 30 hospitalized, some of them in very serious condition, are maintained, so the death toll could rise.
One of the residents in the building told CNN that the building had a malfunctioning fire alarm and that she jumped frequently, almost always for no apparent reason, which could have contributed to the fact that today the residents of the 120 apartments that are in the 19-storey block did not take her seriously.
Asked about it, the fire chief could not confirm that point but did say that his department received a first warning shortly after the fire broke out and they arrived at the scene three minutes later.
Two Hundred firefighters participated in the evacuation task of the victims, who are being rehoused in nearby hotels and other public buildings, said Nigro, who stressed that his men continued to evacuate intoxicated even after they ran out of air.
The fire originated in a room in a duplex between the second and third floors, and when leaving the apartment its occupants left the door open, which contributed to the rapid expansion from the flames and smoke, which rose easily up the remaining floors of the building.
The fire broke out around 11 in the morning in an apartment located on the second floor of the building, a 19-storey tower with 120 homes.
Firefighters found victims “on all floors”, many in cardiac and respiratory arrest, Nigro told reporters.
Nigro compared it to the fire recorded in 1990 at the Happy Land club, in which 87 people perished and that it is the greatest tragedy of its kind in recent New York history.
The worst fire on record in the Big Apple took place in 1911 in a factory in southern Manhattan in which 146 people died.
“The figures are horrible”, added Adams, who today experienced the first great drama of his term as mayor, which began on January 1.
Today’s It is the second major fire registered by the United States this week, after the one that was lived on Wednesday in a residential building in Philadelphia, in which twelve people died, including eight children.
In the Bronx, numerous residents were evacuated by firefighters through the windows of the building, as could be seen in collected images published on social networks and according to several survivors told local media.
“I was yelling: help me! Please come get us!” told The New York Times Wesley Patterson, a 28-year-old man who lives on the third floor of the burning building and who was rescued by firefighters with a ladder when his home was already full of smoke.
Cristal Diaz, another resident, told the New York Post that when he began to smell smoke he placed wet towels on the door: “We didn’t know what to do. We looked out the windows and saw all the corpses that they were taking out with sheets.”
“I am horrified by the devastating fire in The Bronx today. t, with all those affected and with our heroic firefighters, “New York State Governor Kathy Hochul said via Twitter.
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