© Reuters. Emergency workers from FDNY deliver medical aid as they respond to an apartment building fire in the Bronx borough of New York City, U.S., January 9, 2022. REUTERS / Lloyd Mitchell
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NEW YORK (Reuters) – 13 people were killed, including nine children, and dozens were injured in an apartment building fire in the Bronx borough of New York City on Sunday, according to city officials.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed 19 people had died from a fire that broke out around 11 a.m. at a 19-story affordable housing complex.
Earlier, on Sunday, officials said 32 people had been hospitalized with life-threatening injuries and about 60 were injured in total.
“We lost 19 of our neighbors today. It was an unforeseeable tragedy. Join me in praying for those we lost, especially the 9 innocent lives that were cut. short,” wrote Adams on Twitter (NYSE:).
A Reuters photographer at the scene on Sunday watched emergency responders perform CPR on at least eight people at the front of the building. Firefighters with pipes were working to push smoke out of the building, and one of them broke an upstairs window to let out the smoke.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, the city’s fire department commissioner Daniel Nigro told reporters at a news conference.
US Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat whose district includes the building, told MSNBC that “decades of non-investment” in affordable housing developments such as this one poses a risk. public safety and makes such buildings “possible for catastrophic fires that could cost people their lives”. “
Commissioner Nigro said smoke had spread to every floor of the building, possibly due to the door to the apartment where it began to open and the victims were severely asphyxiated.
“Members found victims on every floor of the stairs and were taking them out in cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest,” he said.
About 200 firefighters helped put out the blaze, and some had run out of oxygen in their tanks but were still trying to get through to rescue people from the building, Adams told CNN Sunday.
It is the second deadliest fire at a residential complex in the US this week after 12 people, including eight children, died. fire-local-media-report-2022-01-05 early Wednesday as flames swept through a public housing apartment building in Philadelphia.
“I am appalled by the devastating fires in the Bronx today. My heart goes out to the loved ones of all those we have tragically lost, all those affected and with our heroic @FDNY firefighters,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
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