Boy, three, playing with stove caused
deadly New York fire, officials say
Send a link to a friend
[January 16, 2018]
By Jonathan Allen and Gina Cherelus
NEW YORK (Reuters) - 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.
Shortly before 7 p.m. (midnight GMT) 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.
"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 emphasized 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.
[to top of second column]
|

Fire Department of New York (FDNY) personnel work on the scene of an
apartment fire in Bronx in New York, U.S., December 29, 2017.
REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

"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.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, Stephanie Kelly and Dan Trotta in New
York, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee;
Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Jeffrey
Benkoe and Richard Chang)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |