Boy playing with stove caused the Bronx fire that killed 12

NEW YORK — A Bronx fire that killed 12 people was caused by a 3-year-old boy playing with the burners on a stove, authorities said Friday.

“It seems like a horrible, tragic accident,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on WNYC radio.

The blaze, which killed four children in the five-story building at 2363 Prospect Ave. in Belmont, was the city’s deadliest in more than a quarter-century. It made December the deadliest month for fires in New York City in a decade, said Daniel A. Nigro, city fire commissioner.

The boy playing with the stove in a first-floor apartment screamed when the fire began, sending his mother rushing into the kitchen as it filled with smoke and flames, Nigro said. She ran out of the apartment with the boy and a 2-year-old child, but left the door open, allowing fire to shoot out of the kitchen and into the stairwell, Nigro said.

“Fire travels up,” Nigro said. “The stairway acted like a chimney.”

The passageway filled with smoke and flames, blocking some people from running downstairs and killing others who tried. When firefighters arrived, about three minutes after the first 911 calls, as many as 20 people were scurrying down the fire escape, Nigro said.

Four people remained hospitalized with critical injuries, “fighting for their lives right now,” de Blasio said.

Temperatures were in the teens Thursday night, and stiff winds made it feel below zero, complicating the task for firefighters.

The 12 fatalities made the fire the deadliest since an inferno at the Happy Land Social Club — less than a mile from Thursday’s blaze — killed 87 people in 1990.

The first emergency call Thursday came at 6:51 p.m., and firefighters eventually rescued 12 people.

Once flames shot out from the first-floor apartment kitchen and into the stairwell, they raced upstairs.

“Fire seeks air,” Nigro said. “People open their windows to get onto the fire escapes and it creates this condition where it brings the fire up the stairs.”

He stressed that if there is a fire, people need to close their apartment door as they leave to keep flames from spreading.

The people who died were on multiple floors.