Officials: Deadly NYC fire lit by child
NEW YORK — A preschooler toying with the burners on his mother’s stove accidentally sparked New York City’s deadliest fire in decades, an inferno that quickly overtook an apartment building and blocked the main escape route, the fire commissioner said Friday.
A dozen people died, and four others were fighting for their lives a day after the flames broke out in the century-old building near the Bronx Zoo.
The 3-year-old boy, his mother and another child were able to flee their first-floor apartment. But they left the apartment door open behind them, and it acted like a chimney that drew smoke and flames into a stairwell. From there, the fire spread throughout the fivestory building, authorities said.
The city housing department said investigators would look into why the door did not close automatically, though Mayor Bill de Blasio said there was “nothing problematic about the building that contributed to this tragedy.”
At least 20 people scrambled out via fire escapes on a bitterly cold night, but others could not.
“People had very little time to react,” Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. Firefighters arrived in just over three minutes and saved some people, but “this loss is unprecedented.”
Fernando Batiz said his 56-year-old sister, Maria Batiz, and her 8-month-old granddaughter also died, though the baby’s mother survived.
“The smoke, I guess, overcame her,” Batiz said. “I don’t know what to think. I’m still in shock,” he said.
One family lost four members: Karen Stewart-Francis; her daughters, 2-year-old Kiley Francis and 7-year-old Kelly Francis; and their cousin, 19-year-old Shawntay Young, relatives said. Stewart-Francis’ husband, Holt Francis, was hospitalized, the family said.
“I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know how to feel,” Stewart-Francis’ mother, Ambrozia Stewart, told The New York Times. “Four at one time — what do I do?”
The management company for the building’s owner, D&E Equities, said it was talking to city officials and was “shocked and saddened” by the deaths.
Excluding 9/11, Thursday’s fire was the city’s deadliest since 87 people were killed at a social club in the same Bronx neighborhood in 1990. A fire in a home in another part of the Bronx killed 10 people, including nine children, in 2007.
About 170 firefighters worked in 15-degree weather to rescue dozens of people. The 26-unit apartment building was too old to be required to have modern fireproofing such as sprinkler systems and interior steel construction.