At Least 19 Are Killed, Including 9 Children, in Bronx Apartment Fire

At least 19 people, including nine children, were killed in a fire in a Bronx apartment building on Sunday morning, according to a city official who was not authorized to speak publicly, in what officials described as one of the city’s worst fires in recent memory.

The fire started just before 11 a.m. in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors of the building, on East 181st Street, according to the Fire Department.

Firefighters arrived within three minutes and encountered smoke that extended the entire height of the 19-story building, said the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro.

He added that “the smoke conditions in this building were unprecedented,” and that victims had suffered from severe smoke inhalation.

Crews entering the building found victims “on every floor” and were taking them out in “cardiac and respiratory arrest,” he said.

“The numbers are horrific,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon, adding, “This is going to be one of the worst fires that we have witnessed during modern times.”

A total of 63 people were injured, and those with life-threatening injuries were taken to five Bronx hospitals. Roughly 200 firefighters battled the blaze, officials said.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear on Sunday. Commissioner Nigro said the door to the apartment where the fire started was left open, which helped fuel the fire and allowed the smoke to spread. “We’ve spread the word, ‘close the door, close the door,’” to keep a fire contained, he said.

The 120-unit building, at 333 East 181st Street near Tiebout Avenue, was built in 1972, according to city records.

About 25 windows facing Webster Avenue were blown out. Sheets hung from some of the windows, billowing in the wind.

Officials said the fire called to mind the fire at the Happy Land nightclub in 1990 in the Bronx, which killed 87 people. The club, which operated illegally, had no sprinklers, and several exits were blocked off with roll-down security shutters.

That fire was set deliberately by Julio Gonzalez, who had gotten into an argument with his girlfriend who worked as a ticket taker and coat checker at the club. A bouncer had kicked Mr. Gonzalez out of the club. He returned with a dollar’s worth of gasoline, poured it across the club’s only entrance, and ignited it.

The deadliest fire in the city’s history was in 1911, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in Lower Manhattan, where 146 people died. All but 23 were young women. The fire helped touch off demands for improved safety conditions in factories.

Chelsia Rose Marcius and Eduardo Medina contributed reporting.

Wesley Patterson was in the bathroom just before 11 a.m. on Sunday when his girlfriend knocked on the door. She had just looked out the window of their third-floor apartment and saw flames coming from another unit.

It took only moments for the apartment to become filled with smoke, said Mr. Patterson, who has lived in the building for 20 years.

“We were just trying to breathe,” Mr. Patterson, 28, said. He rushed with his girlfriend and her brother, who lives with the couple, to a back window.

He tried to open the window but the frame was so hot that he burned his hands. When he got the window open, he started screaming to firefighters helping a family in apartment 3M. They couldn’t get to them just yet, he said.

Mr. Patterson said he had to keep opening and shutting the window to keep smoke from pouring in as he called for help.

“I was yelling, ‘Please help me! Please come get us!’” he said.

The family considered going out the front door because it was taking so long, but when they tried to open the door, the apartment flooded with even more smoke.

“I was thinking about my son, and I was wondering if I was ever going to see him again,” Mr. Patterson said.

It was around 11:20 a.m. that Mr. Patterson said he and his family were pulled out of the window by firefighters.

“I’m glad we made it out safe, but I still can’t believe it happened,” he said.

The Wague family stood on the corner of Tiebout Ave. and Folin St., huddled together, some of them under a blanket, after escaping their third floor apartment.

Mamadou Wague, the father, was woken up by one of his children on Sunday morning. “I get up, and there’s smoke in the kids’ rooms,” Mr. Wague, 47, said.

As the family rushed out of the apartment, one of Mr. Wague’s children cried that their sister, Nafisha, 8, was missing. Mr. Wague sprinted to her room and found his daughter sitting on her bed screaming as the fire engulfed her mattress, he said. “I just grab her and run,” Mr. Wague said. He later realized his lips and nose were burned by the flames. “I didn’t think about anything except getting her out.”

Hame Wague, Mr. Wague’s 16-year-old son, described the terror the family faced as they escaped. “It was dark in the hallway. We were all coughing,” Hame Wague said.

As he stood with his family on the corner, Hame Wague looked toward the building and thought of those who did not make it. “My heart goes out to them,” he said.

By 3:30 p.m., the fire was under control, and a faint smell of smoke lingered in the air. Several residents stood nearby. Some wore sneakers, others had winter coats, and a few had blankets wrapped around their shoulders. A few people were huddled under nearby scaffolding to escape the biting wind. Several held their phones close to their faces to assure concerned family members they were alive.

— Chelsia Rose Marcius

The fire that tore through a Bronx apartment building on Sunday was full of working class residents, including some from Latin America and Africa, according to local politicians.

The blaze started just before 11 a.m. in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors of the building, on East 181st Street, according to the Fire Department.

Fire investigators had not yet determined the cause of the fire or why it spread so quickly. It sent flames and smoke throughout the 19-story building, said Oswald Feliz, the city councilman. The building had 120 units, including studios to four-bedroom apartments. The Department of Building sent inspectors to conduct a structural stability inspection of the building.

The building, Twin Parks North West, is home to working class families, many of who depend on Section 8 rental assistance. Some victims were found trapped in the stairwells and others in their apartments, and one man narrowly escaped when the elevator arrived as he was losing consciousness, Mr. Feliz said.

The specific vouchers they use in the development are not transferable, Mr. Feliz said, adding that it would be difficult for them to find permanent housing.

“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “We’re talking about some of the poorest New Yorkers.”

The Bronx building is owned by Camber Property Group, a developer of affordable housing properties in New York City, most of which are in the Bronx. The company’s co-founder, Rick Gropper, was named as a member of Eric Adam’s transition team for housing issues before Mr. Adams took office this month. A representative for Camber Property Group said that the company would provide a statement soon.

Jan. 5, 2022

A dozen people, including eight children, were killed when fire overwhelmed a crowded rowhouse in Philadelphia, in one of the deadliest residential fires in the nation’s recent history. Investigators are looking into the possibility that the fire was caused by a child playing with a lighter near a Christmas tree, according to a warrant application that was filed in state court

Aug. 11, 2019

Five children were killed in a fire at a day care center in a two-story house in Erie, Pa. The city’s fire chief said the house had only one smoke detector — in the attic — and had overloaded extension cords running beneath a couch. The victims ranged in age from 9 months to 14 years old and were sleeping upstairs in the two-story house when the fire was reported.

Aug. 26, 2018

Ten children died when a fire broke out in an apartment building in the Little Village section of Chicago. The children were attending a sleepover at the time. The building’s owner was cited with more than 40 building code violations.

Dec. 28, 2017

Thirteen people died when a five-alarm fire engulfed an apartment building in the Bronx, the deadliest blaze in New York City in more than a quarter of a century. The fire started when a 3-year-old boy was playing with the burners of a stove, the authorities said at the time.

March 21, 2015

A hot plate warming food for the Sabbath sparked a fire that tore through the Brooklyn home of an Orthodox Jewish family, killing seven children. There were no smoke detectors on the first floor of the home where the fire broke out or on the second floor where the family members had been sleeping.

April 3, 2008

Ten people, including eight children, were killed when a fire swept through a home in Brockway, Pa., a rural town about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The victims ranged in age from 4 months to 40 years old.

Dec. 24, 1989

A Christmas Eve fire at a high-rise hotel that had been converted into apartments for seniors in Johnson City, Tenn., killed 16 people, including 14 residents. The fire, which started in the living room of one of the apartments, injured 30 people, including 15 firefighters.

May 13, 1985

A police helicopter dropped a bomb on a rowhouse in West Philadelphia where members of the communal, anti-government group MOVE lived, an action that the City Council apologized for in 2020 after decades of intense criticism. Eleven people, including five children, were killed, and more than 60 nearby homes were destroyed by the fire.

July 5, 1982

A man with a lengthy criminal record and a history of mental illness intentionally started a fire in an apartment building in Waterbury, Conn., after an argument with a niece who lived there. The fire killed 14 people and displaced more than 100 residents. The man was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the deadly arson.

A deadly fire Sunday in the Bronx shocked officials, with Gov. Kathy Hochul saying she was “horrified” by the fast-moving blaze and Congressman Adriano Espaillat saying he was heart broken and praying for the victims.

The fire’s thick, choking smoke quickly engulfed the apartment building, and firefighters were still searching the building for dead and injured. Many of those killed were children.

Gov. Hochul tweeted Sunday that the “entire State of New York stands with New York City.”

Many of the fire’s victims appeared to be immigrants, largely from Africa. Mr. Espaillat, a former undocumented immigrant himself who represents the Bronx, tweeted that the “scale of this tragedy is unimaginable.”

The fire was also devastating for new Mayor Eric Adams, who described it as “horrific.”