New York - A 3-year-old boy playing with
the burners on a kitchen stove started a fire in a New York City
apartment building that killed 12 people, including four
children, city officials said on Friday.
The toddler had a history of fiddling with the stove in the
kitchen of his family's first-floor apartment, his mother told
officials investigating the deadliest fire in the city since
1990.
On Thursday the child,
who had been left unattended, started screaming as the kitchen
filled with smoke and fire, Daniel Nigro, the city's fire
department commissioner, told reporters at a news conference.
His mother grabbed him and a younger sibling, running
outside to safety and leaving the apartment door open.
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"The stairway acted like a chimney," Nigro said at the
Friday news conference. The blaze swept out the apartment
doorway to higher floors of the five-story building, fanned by
fresh oxygen each time frightened tenants flung open windows.
"People had very little time to react," he said. "They
couldn't get back down the stairs. Those that tried perished."
Children aged 1, 2 and 7 as well as a boy whose age was
unknown died, along with four men and four women, according to
the New York Police Department.
Among the dead were at least three members of the same
family Karen Francis, 37, Charmela Francis, 7, and Kylie
Francis, 2. Also identified as deceased were Maria Batiz, 58,
and 19-year-old Shantay Young.
"Children starting fires is not rare," Nigro said. He
emphasised that young children should not be left unattended,
and those fleeing apartment fires should always shut doors
behind them once the last person is out.
Authorities said firefighters rescued 12 people from the
building and four people were in the hospital in critical
condition. More than 160 firefighters responded to the
four-alarm blaze, the first arriving about 3 minutes after
emergency calls came in. About 20 people were already on fire
escapes, Nigro said.
New York City is going through a bitter cold snap with
temperatures in the low-teens Fahrenheit (minus teens
Celsius)and high winds.
At least 14 families were homeless, and four of them were
taken to hotels, according to the American Red Cross.
"There's still around 10 families we have not connected with
yet," said Michael de Vulpillieres, a Red Cross spokesman. Red
Cross representatives stationed on the block offered blankets
and smoke alarm installations to residents.
Firefighters sifted through the charred interior of the
building, but the exterior showed little damage and the red fire
escapes were intact. Shards of glass and chunks of ice littered
the sidewalk outside.
The building, with 26 apartments, has at least six open
building code violations, according to city records. One
violation was for a broken smoke detector in an apartment on the
first floor, reported in August.
"I know there were concerns raised about the building
itself," Mayor Bill de Blasio told WNYC. "Based on the research
we have at this moment, it does not appear there was anything
problematic about the building or the fire safety in the
building."
The building is in the Belmont section of the Bronx, a
primarily residential, close-knit neighborhood known as the
"Little Italy" of the borough, near Fordham University and the
Bronx Zoo.
It was the deadliest fire in the city since an arsonist
torched a Bronx nightclub in 1990, killing 87 people inside the
venue that did not have fire exits, alarms or sprinklers, the
New York Times reported.
In 2007, 10 immigrants from Mali, including nine children,
died after a space heater caught fire in a Bronx building.