19 Killed, 9 of Them Kids, in Bronx Apartment Building Blaze

A New York City apartment building fire has killed at least 19 people—including nine children—Sunday morning. The fire in the 120-unit building in the Bronx is the deadliest fire in the city in about 30 years, and the deadliest in a residential building in the US since 2017, when 13 died in another Bronx apartment fire, per the AP. It comes just days after a blaze in a Philadelphia house killed 12 people, eight of them kids. “The numbers are horrific,” NYC Mayor Eric Adams told the New York Times. Victims were found on every floor of the building, the BBC reports. About 200 firefighters were called in to tackle the blaze. They found about 63 people injured, too, sending 32 to local hospitals. Some residents were rescued via ladders from their windows.

Most of the victims suffered from smoke inhalation. There were people trapped in their apartments, some in cardiac arrest or not breathing, NBC 4 reports. The fire appears to have started on a duplex apartment on the second and third floors, and then spread upwards. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the door of the apartment where the fire started was left open. “We’ve spread the word, ‘close the door, close the door,’” to keep a fire contained, he said, per the Times. So far, fire marshals say the source doesn’t look suspicious. (More apartment fire stories.)