New York Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday a provisional toll revised downwards – 17 people killed, including eight children – after the accidental and spectacular fire Sunday of a building in the popular district of the Bronx, in New York.
Back on site on Monday, the new mayor of the megalopolis indicated that “nine adults and eight children” had lost their lives due to a fire and extremely thick smoke caused by an incident with an auxiliary heater in an apartment. duplex.
The provisional previous toll since Sunday afternoon stood at 19 dead, including nine children and adolescents.
New York Fire Chief Daniel Nigro said the numbers could still change, especially since more than 60 people were injured, half of them seriously.
Global character
After speaking on Sunday of “one of the worst” fires in recent New York history, Eric Adams spoke on Monday of an “unspeakable tragedy” and insisted on its “global” nature, given the cultural mosaic of a neighborhood like the Bronx.
New York firefighters said on Sunday that they had found victims “at each level and (having) evacuated them in a state of cardiac and respiratory arrest” from this 19-storey HLM-type brick building. Thick, suffocating black smoke rose to the top of the building.
The smoke from the fire was “so thick that you couldn’t breathe, as if you were suffocating,” a 30-year-old resident of the building told AFPTV.
Another resident on the 11th floor, “asthmatic”, told AFP that he had barely had time to “take a coat and go down the elevator” because the hallway was black with smoke.
Previous
Last Wednesday, a terrible fire in a house in Philadelphia killed 12 people, including eight children.
And in this same Bronx neighborhood, in December 2017, a fire killed 13 people, including four children. It had been caused by a three-and-a-half-year-old child who was playing with a gas stove.
New York suffers in various neighborhoods from a huge housing crisis, with buildings and apartments often dilapidated and poorly maintained.
ats, afp
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