On Sunday, 19 people, including nine children, were killed in an apartment fire in the US state of New York City.
Emergency workers at the scene of a massive fire at an apartment building in New York on Sunday. (Photo: AP)
Nineteen people, including nine children, have been killed in an apartment fire in New York City, which the city’s fire commissioner has called one of the deadliest in recent memory.
Stephen Ringel, a senior adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, confirmed the death toll on Sunday, while a city official who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the number of dead children.
Ringel said more than five dozen people were injured in the hospital and 13 were still in critical condition. FDNY Commissioner Daniel Negro said at a news conference earlier in the afternoon that most of the victims were suffering from severe smoke.
According to the FDNY, about 200 firefighters responded to the scene at the Twin Park Apartments in the Bronx, a 19-story building on East 181 Street.
Negro said, “Firefighters “found victims on every floor and were evacuating them in cardiac and respiratory arrest.”
‘Unprecedented in our city’
“This is unprecedented in our city. We expect that there may be many deaths. Negro compared the severity of the fire to the Happy Land Social Club fire that killed 87 people in 1990, when a man caught fire in the building after getting into an argument with his ex-girlfriend and being kicked out of the club was given.
According to Negro, Sunday’s fire started in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors. He said firefighters found the apartment door open, which apparently intensified the fire and the smoke quickly spread upwards.
The fire is not being considered suspicious in origin, but the cause is being investigated.
Sunday’s fire comes just days after a house caught fire Philadelphia released 12 people, including eight children dead.
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