OLD BUILDINGS ARE DEATH TRAPS IN NEW YORK CITY
December is the peak fire month and there are many potential causes: defective electrical circuits, overloaded extension cords, heaters placed near combustibles as people try to protect from the record-setting cold, children playing with matches/fire, etc.
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COWARDS: BLAME THE CHILD FOR STARTING THE FIRE!
A child playing with a stove ignited a massive fire Thursday night that killed at least 12 people, including children, at an apartment building in the Bronx borough of New York City, officials said.
Daniel Nigro, the FDNY’s commissioner, told reporters Friday that a 3 1/2-year-old child was fiddling around with a stove on the first floor of the building when the fire broke out around 7 p.m.
The mother of the child left the apartment with her two children, leaving the door open which allowed the blaze to spread quickly, he said.
More than 160 firefighters responded to the four-alarm fire in the Bronx, just a block from the borough's famed zoo. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Nigro said the incident was the worst loss of life caused by fires in the city, excluding the September 11 terror attacks, since 87 people were killed at a social club fire in the Bronx in 1990.
More than 170 firefighters were on the scene of the four-alarm fire, located at a five-story walk-up apartment house in the Bronx, just a block from the borough's famed zoo, FOX5 New York reported. The firefighters worked to battle the blaze in temperatures as low as 15 degrees.
BRONX FIRE'S MULTIPLE VICTIMS INCLUDE YOUNG CHILDREN AND ADULTS
The victims included children aged 1, 2, 7 and an unidentified boy, the FDNY announced. The other victims were three women aged 19, 37, 63, one unidentified woman and four unidentified men. Authorities have not named the victims. Dozens of other victims were rescued with injuries but were expected to recover.
The New York Times reported a woman, her two daughters and her niece were among the dead. They were identified as Karen Stewart-Francis, 37, and her daughters: Kylie Francis, 2, and Kelly Francis, 7 and her niece Shawntay Young, 19.
Smoke rises from a window of a burned apartment building in the Bronx. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Stewart-Francis' mother, told the newspaper that 13 family members resided in the apartment building.
“My daughter. My grandchildren. Tell me, what am I going to do?” Ambrozia Stewart said. “Four people I lost.”
The building had no elevator, the Associated Press reported, citing city records. Fire escapes were visible on the facade of the building.
The fire department responded to emergency calls within three minutes.
Witnesses described the scene of the fire and the panic from the building's tenants.
One witness, Xanral Collins, told the New York Post he saw a father running toward the building, but was unable to enter.
"I saw him screaming, 'My babies are dead! My babies are dead!'" Collins said.
Jamal Flicker, a witness told the New York Post he heard screams for help.
"The smoke was crazy, people screaming, 'Get out!" Flicker said. "I heard a woman yelling, 'We're trapped, help!'"
"I heard a woman yelling, 'We're trapped, help!'" - Jamal Flicker, a witness, said.
Neighborhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, told the Associated Press she got out on a fire escape as another resident fled with five children.
"When I got here, she was crying," Gonzalez said.
Kwabena Mensah, who feared his son, U.S. Army soldier Emmanuel Mensah, was one of the victims of the devastating fire, confirmed his death to PIX11 on Friday.
Mensah's uncle, Twum Bredu, told The New York Times that his nephew "brough four people out. When he went to bring a fifth person out, the fire caught up with him."
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a news conference Thursday, advised to "hold your families close and keep these families here in the Bronx in your prayers."
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At least 12 people were killed when a fire fueled by gusty winds tore through a century-old apartment building in the Bronx on a frigid Thursday night, New York City officials said. It was the deadliest fire in the city in more than a quarter-century.
In addition to the deaths, four people were critically injured and two people sustained non-life-threatening injuries, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference late Thursday. The youngest among the dead was 1 year old, the oldest over 50.
“Tonight in the Bronx we’ve seen the worst fire tragedy in at least a quarter of a century,’’ the mayor said on Twitter late Thursday. “It is unspeakable, and families have been torn apart.”
The first emergency call came at 6:51 p.m. for a fire in a five-story apartment building at 2363 Prospect Avenue in the Belmont neighborhood, a spokesman for the New York City Fire Department said. The department responded in three minutes, the mayor said, and firefighters were able to rescue 12 people.
The fire began on the first floor but quickly spread throughout the building, as the wind fed oxygen to the flames. The people who died were on various floors, the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, said.
The blaze grew to five-alarm status, and more than 160 firefighters responded. By the time Mr. de Blasio spoke, around 10 p.m., the flames had been brought under control.
The cause of the fire was not yet clear. But December is the peak fire month and there are many potential causes: defective electrical circuits, overloaded extension cords, heaters placed near combustibles as people try to protect from the record-setting cold.
It was a bitterly cold night, with temperatures in the teens, and the wind chill made it feel below zero. Water leaking from fire hoses froze in streaks on the concrete, and displaced residents walked around draped in American Red Cross blankets. Three young girls were whisked into a neighboring building after climbing down a fire escape with no shoes or coats.
Officials said they were opening up the nearby Grace H. Dodge vocational high school as a reception center for people who needed housing and other services. People looking for relatives who lived in the building were also told to go to the school, or to call 311.
Luz Hernandez said she first realized something was wrong when the smell of burning rubber filled her apartment on the fourth floor, followed by smoke so thick that the room turned pitch-black. She summoned her husband and two sons, 11 and 16, to the window, and they descended the front fire escape as smoke rose near them. Photo
Evacuees from a deadly fire in the Bronx on Thursday. Credit David Dee Delgado for The New York Times
Later, Ms. Hernandez said in Spanish, she saw the charred bodies of two women who lived together and their two young daughters being carried away on stretchers.
Through the closed windows of a building next door, the smoke seeped into a fifth-floor apartment where Ana Santiago, 25, was cooking dinner.
Ms. Santiago said she called 911 and ran downstairs with her 4-year-old son, knocking on neighbors’ doors as she went. When she reached the street, she saw a man lying on the ground, she said, pointing to a patch of sidewalk where glass shards lay like snow. She could not tell if he was alive or dead.
“I saw the body, I almost passed out,” she said.
Down the street, under a sign welcoming visitors to Little Italy, Dianna Reyes wailed as she hopped out of a Red Cross vehicle. She said that she had escaped with her daughter and pulled a neighbor’s two children from the fire, but that she had to leave other children behind.
“I had one on my front and one on my back,” Ms. Reyes said, sobbing. “I couldn’t carry the rest of them.” Photo
Thieron Diallo, 59, a Guinean immigrant who lived in a basement apartment, said the tenants of the building — a five-story walk-up near East 187th Street, close to the Bronx Zoo — were a diverse set, including Africans, West Indians and Hispanics.
The building, constructed of plaster and brick, was not fireproof. It was built in 1916 and had more than 20 units, according to property records.
City records appeared to indicate that as of Thursday, the building had six open violations, including one for a defective smoke detector on the first floor. That was the floor where the fire began, Commissioner Nigro said.
The 12 confirmed 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. It surpassed the toll from a fire a decade ago, in March 2007, when an overheated cord to a space heater caused a fire that tore through a four-story house in the Bronx and killed 10 people, nine of them children.
Elected officials — including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president; and Rafael Salamanca Jr., the neighborhood’s City Council member — took to Twitter late Thursday to offer their condolences. Mr. Cuomo said he was “closely monitoring” the situation.
Kwabena Mensah, 62, said he had visited four hospitals looking for his son, Emmanuel Mensah, who lives on the third floor of the building. Six others who live in the apartment evacuated safely and were gathered at the elder Mr. Mensah’s home nearby, he said, but his son was nowhere to be found.
Emmanuel, 28, was stationed in Virginia with the Army and had returned to the Bronx just a week ago for the holidays.
At Prospect Avenue and East 187th Street, Kenneth Kodua stood in a corner store, staring in disbelief at the plastic takeout bag in his hand. He had gone to a nearby restaurant to buy food, he said, telling his roommate he would be back soon. When he returned 20 minutes later, firefighters had swarmed the building and told him he could not enter.
“Just 20 minutes. I told my roommate I’m going to buy food. Within 20 minutes …” he said, trailing off.
Mr. Kodua, 37, said he had called his roommate more than a dozen times, to no avail.
“The phone is ringing, but nothing,” he said, struggling to form words, his eyes glazed. He turned away, toward a deli shelf, tapping his hand on cans of cat food.
“Oh my God,” he repeated to himself. “Oh my God.”
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Thursday, December 28, 201
BELMONT, Bronx (WABC) -- At least 12 people were killed, including at least one baby, in a large apartment building fire in the Bronx on Thursday night.
The 5-alarm fire broke out just before 7 p.m. on Prospect Avenue near East 187 St. on the first floor of the five-story building. The flames quickly spread up to the fifth floor. The building is described as "non-fireproof" and is highly combustible.
PHOTOS from the scene:
More than 170 firefighters responded to the scene.
The identities of the victims have not yet been released, although Mayor Bill de Blasio said one of the victims is as young as 1 year old. The oldest victim is believed to be over the age of 50. Three of the victims are members of the same family.
"They were burned, even little kids on the stretchers, burned," a resident said.
There are also several other people seriously injured, four are said to be in critical condition. Two people were rescued from the fire and are expected to survive.
The patients were taken to Jacobi Medical Center and St. Barnabas Hospital.
The fire was brought under control just after 9 p.m. The scene is described as having a very heavy smoke condition. The victims perished on every floor of the building.
"In a department that's certainly no stranger to tragedy we're shocked by this loss," FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.
The Office of Emergency Management and the MTA are sending buses to the location to accommodate residents that have been evacuated from the building.
The mayor quickly arrived at the scene to receive a briefing on the tragedy.
"This is the worst fire tragedy we have seen in this city in at least a quarter century," Mayor de Blasio said during a press conference at the scene. "Based on the information we have now, this will rank as one of the worst losses of life to a fire in many, many years."
Officials give update on tragic Bronx fire that left at least 12 people dead.
Governor Andrew Cuomo also expressed his sympathy for the victims Thursday night.
The cause of the fire is not yet known.