Deadly fire started by boy playing with stove
12 dead, others clinging to life in apartment blaze
NEW YORK • A preschooler toying with the burners on his mother’s stove accidentally lit New York City’s deadliest fire in decades, turning an apartment building into an inferno that killed a dozen people as smoke and flames swept up the stairwell in minutes and blocked the main route to safety, the fire commissioner said Friday.
The three-year-old-boy, his mother and another child were able to flee their first-floor apartment. But they left the door open behind them, and it acted like a chimney that carried Thursday’s fire out of the apartment and through the five-storey building, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. At least 20 of their neighbours scrambled out via fire escapes on a bitterly cold night, but others could not.
“People had very little time to react,” Nigro said.
Twelve people died, including girls ages one, two and seven and a boy whose age was not given, officials said. Four other people were fighting for their lives.
Fernando Batiz said his sister, Maria Batiz, 56, and her eight-month-old granddaughter, were among the dead, though the baby’s mother survived.
“They couldn’t escape ... The smoke, I guess, overcame her — everything happened so quick,” said Batiz, 54. He said his sister, a home care attendant, was a selfless person who had helped him when he was homeless.
“I don’t know what to think. I’m still in shock,” her shaken brother said Friday.
Thursday’s fire broke out just before 7 p.m. in a century-old building near the Bronx Zoo. Its roughly 20 apartments are home to people from countries ranging from the U.S. to the Dominican Republic to Guinea.
About 170 firefighters worked in -9C weather to rescue dozens of people.
Residents described opening their front doors to see smoke too thick to walk through and clambering down icy fire escapes with children in hand. Some escaped barefoot or in their nightclothes.
Huddled in a deli on the block with her family, Crisbel Martinez, 10, cried Friday as she recalled her escape from her fifth-floor apartment with her three older brothers.
One brother’s girlfriend was coming into the building when she saw smoke, called him and called police. With their mother at work, the siblings checked and saw the smoke.
“Then we got changed and went through the fire escape,” Crisbel said. She had spent the night at an aunt’s house.
Twum Bredu still didn’t know Friday afternoon what had become of his brother, Emmanuel Mensah, 28. He was staying with a family that had escaped the fire safely, but no one could find Mensah, despite checking four hospitals.
Still, his family kept looking, and hoping for word of him.
“That’s my prayer,” said Bredu, 61.
THEY COULDN’T ESCAPE ... THE SMOKE, I GUESS, OVERCAME HER — EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO QUICK.