At least 19 dead in fire in New York apartment building:

In one of the worst fires in New York’s recent history, at least 19 people died in the Bronx – nine of them were children. “The numbers are terrible,” said Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke of a “tragedy”. It is assumed that the number of deaths could rise even further in view of the over 60 mostly life-threatening injuries. Fire chief Daniel Nigro named a broken electrical heater as the cause of the fire.

“It all started with a defective electrical room heating system,” says Nigro. “The fire has spread in the apartment, which extends over two floors.” In addition, the door of the apartment in the lower part of the building was open, which allowed deadly smoke to spread throughout the 19-story building. The people were trapped in their apartments or in the stairwell by smoke. The firefighters discovered victims on every floor, many of them with severe smoke inhalation.

One of the residents of the building told how he heard people shouting “Help, help, help” on the run. While his children were unharmed, his neighbor’s children were killed in the fire. He usually takes them all to school every morning, but that will never happen again. “What am I going to tell my children now?” He said through tears. “Tomorrow is a school day, you will ask me where your friends are.”

Dilenny Rodriguez described hearing children scream. She herself was in her apartment when she noticed the smoke. She and her daughter waited in the bedroom until firefighters knocked on the door and took them down the stairs. “The bad thing was when we went down the stairs and we saw a corpse and dead dogs. We couldn’t do anything, ”she said. They mourn their neighbors. “Everyone had their families here in the building.”

The fire broke out on Sunday morning (local time) on a cold, wet New York winter day. After a large-scale deployment of around 200 firefighters, it was extinguished in a few hours. Videos on social media showed images of thick smoke billowing through broken windows. Firefighters used ladders to get residents out of the house. According to Mayor Adams, firefighters were still looking for survivors after they ran out of oxygen.

Hours after the fire in the heart of the Bronx, the scene of the accident was still illuminated by blue lights. Hundreds of police, fire brigade and special teams continued the search for clues. An adjoining school was opened for the burn victims to provide accommodation for the now homeless. The building is a block of flats for socially disadvantaged families with adjusted rents. The Bronx is the poorest district of New York with an income of its residents far below the average of the US east coast metropolis.

The accident marks one of the worst fires in New York’s recent history. In 1990, 87 people were killed in a fire in the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx. The fire has been attributed to arson. As recently as Wednesday, a fire in a residential building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, killed twelve people, including eight children. The fire broke out in the middle floor of a three-story apartment building.