Child Playing With Stove Caused Bronx Fire That Killed 12
A fire in a Bronx apartment building on Thursday night that killed 12 people, among them four children, was caused by a young child playing with a stove in a first-floor apartment, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday.
“It seems like a horrible, tragic accident,” Mr. de Blasio said in an interview on WNYC radio.
The fire was the city’s deadliest blaze in more than a quarter-century.
A woman and her two daughters and a niece on the fifth floor were killed when flames from the first floor rushed up the stairwell, filling the passageway with smoke and sending people scurrying down a fire escape.
The woman, Karen Stewart-Francis, 37, and her two daughters, Kylie Francis, 2, and Kelly Francis, 7, and her niece, Shawntay Young, 19, were part of a family from Jamaica that had 13 members living in the building, Ms. Stewart-Francis’s mother, Ambrozia Stewart, said on Friday.
“My daughter. My grandchildren. Tell me, what am I going to do?” Ms. Stewart wailed, standing near the building, 2363 Prospect Avenue in Belmont, about 8 a.m. as a generator and sirens whirred in the background. “Four people I lost.”
Her son-in-law, Holt Francis, was in a coma at Jacobi Medical Center, Ms. Stewart said.
A 1-year-old girl and a boy whose age was not given were also among those pronounced dead, the police said early on Friday.
Another of Ms. Stewart’s daughters, Shevan Stewart, leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder on Friday morning, tears streaming down her cheeks. The younger Ms. Stewart had been watching television in her first-floor apartment on Thursday when she heard someone yell “Fire!” and then grabbed her passport and ID before emerging into a wall of smoke.
From outside, she called a relative in the building. “We kept on calling — call, call, call,” she said. But there was no answer.
In a television interview earlier on Friday, Mr. de Blasio said: “We’ve lost 12 people. We could lose more. There are some still fighting for their lives.”
Temperatures were in the teens on Thursday night, and stiff winds made it feel below zero, complicating the task for firefighters. Water leaking from fire hoses froze in streaks on the concrete as displaced residents walked around draped in American Red Cross blankets.
In addition to the deaths, four people were critically injured and two suffered nonlife-threatening injuries, the authorities said.
The dead included a 63-year-old woman and three unidentified men who were pronounced dead at the scene. In addition to Ms. Stewart-Francis and her niece, Ms. Young, an unidentified woman and an unidentified man were pronounced dead at hospitals.
The five-story apartment building had open violations for a broken smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector in a first-floor apartment, according to Department of Housing Preservation and Development records. But Mr. de Blasio said there did not appear to be problems with the building or violations that could be blamed for the fire.
The 12 fatalities made the fire the deadliest since an inferno at the Happy Land Social Club — less than a mile from Thursday’s blaze — killed 87 people in 1990. Thursday’s fire surpassed the toll from a blaze in the Bronx that killed 10 people, nine of them children, when an overheated cord on a space heater caused a fire that tore through a four-story house.
The first emergency call on Thursday came at 6:51 p.m., and firefighters responded in three minutes, eventually rescuing 12 people.
The fire began on the first floor but quickly spread throughout the building, as the bitter winds fed the flames. The people who died were on multiple floors, the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, said.
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