A fire in the Bronx kills 19, including nine children

At least 19 persons, including nine children, died this Sunday in New York because of a fire unleashed in a residential building of the New York borough of the Bronx, as confirmed by the mayor of the city, Eric Adams. In addition, there are dozens of injured, 13 of whom are in critical condition. “It’s going to be one of the worst fires in our history“Adams assured in statements to the media.”The figures are horrible“.

Hours before the first official balance, the chief of the New York Fire Department, Daniel Nigro, had already warned: “We expect there to be numerous deaths.” At the moment, the origin of the flames is unknown.

More than 200 firefighters participated in the work to extinguish the fire that broke out around 11 a.m. in a 19-story building located in the heart of the Bronx. The troops arrived in just three minutes after receiving the warning and found that the smoke already covered the entire structure. “The smoke conditions in this building are unprecedented,” said Nigro. When the firefighters entered the interior they found “victims on all floors“and many suffered”cardiac and respiratory arrests“.

Open door

According to the first investigations, the fire started in a duplex located on the second and third floors. Firefighters found the apartment door open, which apparently would have allowed the flames to spread rapidly and smoke to spread throughout the building.

In images distributed by various media and on social networks, many people, including children, could be seen being treated by emergency teams.

Cristal Diaz, a 27-year-old resident, explained to the New York Post that she decided to place wet towels under the front door when she noticed the smell of smoke. “It was all very crazy. We did not know what to do. We looked out the window and saw corpses that were taken out on stretchers,” he added.

The burning block is one of multiple buildings in the Twin Parks Northwest complex and was constructed in 1973 as part of a project to build moderate and affordable housing in the Bronx. “Many of these buildings are old. Not all floors have fire alarms. And many of them also do not have sprinkler systems,” Ritchie Torres, the Democratic representative of the district in Congress, told MSNBC. “And, furthermore, the risk of fire is much higher in low-income neighborhoods in the Bronx than in the rest of the city or the country,” he added.

Nigro and Torres compared the severity of this fire to that of the Happy Land club that killed 87 people in 1990, when a man set the building on fire after being expelled from the club for fighting with his ex-girlfriend. Although the worst fire in New York history took place in 1911, when 146 people perished in a factory of the Triangle Shirtwaist company.

12 killed in Philadelphia

Related news

This week, there was another fire with fatalities in the United States. Last Wednesday, 12 people, including eight children, died in the fire of a three-story building in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia. Sources of the investigation revealed to a local media that the fire could be caused by one of the children who lived in the building and who was playing with a lighter next to a Christmas tree.

This event caused a great commotion and until this Sunday in New York it was considered one of the most deadly in recent decades in the country. Firefighters said the building had four battery-operated smoke detectors, but none were working. The last revision was in 2020.