9 children among 19 dead in Bronx apartment fire
NEW YORK — A faulty space heater on a chilly Sunday morning sparked a fire that filled a high-rise Bronx apartment building with thick smoke, killing 19 people including nine children. It was New York City’s deadliest fire in three decades.
Trapped residents broke windows for air and stuffed wet towels under doors as smoke rose from a lower-floor apartment where the fire started. Multiple limp children were seen being given oxygen after they were carried out. Evacuees had faces covered in soot.
Firefighters found victims on every floor, many of them in cardiac and respiratory arrest, said Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro. Some people “could not escape because of the volume of smoke,” he said. More than five dozen people were hurt and 13 people were hospitalized in critical condition. The fire commissioner said most of the victims had severe smoke inhalation.
Mayor Eric Adams praised FDNY firefighters for continuing to make rescues even after their oxygen tanks had run out.
Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser to Adams, said the children who died were 16 years old or younger. Adams said at a news conference that many residents were originally from the West African nation of Gambia.
One man who was pulled to safety said he’d initially scoffed when the fire alarm went off, saying he’d become numb to them because of frequent false alarms at the apartment tower.
Nigro said investigators found the fire “started in a malfunctioning electric space heater” in an apartment unit spanning the second and third floors of the 19-story building. The door to the apartment and a door to a stairwell were left open, letting smoke quickly spread throughout the building, Nigro said.
Building resident Sandra Clayton said she ran for her life when she saw the hallway filling with black smoke and heard people screaming, “Get out! Get out!”
Clayton, 61, said she groped her way down a darkened stairway, clutching her dog in her arms. The smoke was so thick and black that she couldn’t see, but she could tell there were other tenants nearby because she heard their panicked wails and crying.
Her dog, Mocha, slipped from her arms in the commotion and was later found dead in the stairwell.
“I just ran down the steps as much as I could but people was falling all over me, screaming,” Clayton recounted from a hospital where she was treated for smoke inhalation.
About 200 firefighters responded to the building on East 181st Street around 11 a.m. Sunday.