At least 19 dead, including 9 children, in New York building fire

“This is going to be one of the worst fires in our history”, said New York City Mayor Eric Adams at the scene of a fire that devastated a building in the Bronx neighborhood. At least 19 people died and 63 injured, according to the mayor’s toll. Among the dead are 9 children, according to an anonymous official source, quoted by the Associated Press agency.

The new mayor of New York, a former African-American policeman who took office on 1^is January, mentioned a “Real tragedy not just for the Bronx and the city”.

The fire was caused by an auxiliary heater, said the city fire chief. Investigators “Determined on the basis of material evidence and the first testimonies of residents that the fire started from a bedroom and an auxiliary heater”, said Daniel Nigro, during a press briefing at the foot of this HLM-type building in this huge working-class area of ​​the Bronx.

Intoxicated by smoke

In footage circulating on social media, huge flames and thick black smoke billowed in the morning from a window of a multi-story building in the Bronx, a huge neighborhood in upstate New York. Most of the victims suffered from smoke poisoning.

George King, a resident of a nearby apartment building, told AFP about a scene from « chaos » : “I’ve lived here for 15 years, it’s the first time I’ve seen something like this”. He said he had “Saw smoke, a lot of people panicked” and “Nobody wanted to jump from the building”.

New York firefighters, called to the scene around 11 a.m. local time, had initially announced a toll of around thirty injured and had brought the incident under control in two hours. Two hundred firefighters intervened on a 19-story brick HLM building.

Another fatal fire Tuesday in Philadelphia

Last Wednesday, a terrible fire in an apartment building in Philadelphia killed 12 people, including eight children.

And in this same district of the Bronx, in December 2017, a fire had killed twelve people including four children, the most serious in twenty-five years in the city. It had been provoked by a three-and-a-half-year-old child playing with a gas stove.

New York, a megalopolis of nine million inhabitants, is suffering in various neighborhoods from a huge housing crisis, with buildings that are sometimes dilapidated and poorly maintained.

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