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At least 19 dead, including 9 children, in massive fire at Bronx apartment building

The fire broke out at a high-rise apartment building located at 333 East 181st in the BronxBy Eyewitness NewsSunday, January 9, 2022 6:40PM

Josh Einiger has the latest on the fire from the Tremont section.TREMONT, Bronx (WABC) — At least 19 people are dead, including nine children, in a catastrophic fire that broke out at a high-rise apartment building in the Bronx Sunday, officials said.

About 200 firefighters were battling the five-alarm fire that started in a duplex apartment on the third floor of a 19-story high-rise building at 333 East 181st Street in the Tremont section of the Bronx just before 11 a.m. Sunday.

FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro says a malfunctioning space heater was the cause of the deadly fire. He says the space heater was being used to supplement building heat. Smoke alarms were operable.
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At least 63 people were injured, with 32 sustaining “life-threatening” injuries and 13 “clinging to their lives” in nearby hospitals, according to Nigro. The predominant injury for the 32 victims was severe smoke inhalation.

FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro details the effort to rescue people from a burning building in the Bronx.

Nigro says he expected “numerous fatalities.”

“This is going to be one of the worst fires we have witnessed here in modern times in the city of New York,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at the press conference.

At least 12 people, including eight children, are dead after a large house fire broke out in Philadelphia early Wednesday morning. Jim Dolan has more on the tragic events.

Eyewitness News reporter Josh Einiger spoke with the man who lived in the apartment where the fire started.

“We was sleeping and then my kids were screaming saying fire, fire,” Mamadou Wague said.

The fire started in Wague’s third floor duplex, where he lives with his wife and eight kids, one of whom was trapped on a burning bed.

Wague has burns on his nose from when he leapt through the flames to rescue his daughter, who is burned but alive.

“I don’t want anybody life — I don’t want to hear anybody dead in this fire, that’s what I worry about,” Wague said.

Firefighters arrived on site three minutes after the initial fire call and were met with fire in the hallway of the building.

Victims were found in the stairwells, according to the commissioner, as smoke extended the height of the building.

Speaking to the resilience of the firefighters who battled the blaze, Mayor Adams said many of the firefighters’ oxygen tanks eventually became empty and “they still went through the smoke.”

NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul hold an update after a catastrophic fire left at least 19 dead, including 9 children at a Bronx apartment building.

Residents described the events that unfolded as “traumatizing” as they escaped from the building during the fire.

“It was a lot of smoke so we had to stop at the sixth floor and we were able to get into a neighbor’s home. We stayed there until the firefighters came and they were able to guide us out,” apartment resident Fatima said.

Nigro noted that a door was left open, which allowed the fire and smoke to spread.

The 32 injured were transported to five different hospitals in the Bronx.

In total, at least 63 people were injured from the fire. Of the surviving victims there are 13 people with life threatening injuries, 9 people in serious condition and 22 people with non-life threatening injuries.

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Eyewitness News coverage of the Happy Land fire in which an arsonist killed 87 people at a NY club in 1990

New York Governor Kathy Hochul says she is “horrified by the devastating fire.”

She added, “My heart is with the loved ones of all those we’ve tragically lost, all of those impacted and with our heroic FDNY firefighters. The entire state of New York stands with New York City.”

Hochul was also on site where she noted that she spoke with a mother who lost her entire family in the fire and sent a message to the victims that “we will not forget you, we will not abandon you.”

Dramatic video posted to social media show fire and smoke gushing out of multiple windows in the building.

Neighbors recorded video of massive smoke plumes and FDNY rescues during the deadly Jan. 9 apartment fire in the Bronx, New York City.

The fire has since been put out.

An investigation is underway but the fire commissioner says the fire is not suspicious.

Department of Building inspectors are currently on scene to conduct structural stability inspections throughout the building and assist with the ongoing investigation.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates that portable electric heaters are involved in about 1,100 fires per year.

The National Fire Protection Association, claims space heaters were most often responsible for the home heating equipment fires, accounting for more than two in five fires, as well as the vast majority of deaths (81%) and injuries (80%) in home fires caused by heating equipment.

This was the second major fire in the Bronx over the weekend. A four-alarm fire in the Fordham Heights section of the Bronx that began early Saturday morning injured a firefighter and displaced three families.

Horrific Bronx fire leaves at least 19 dead, dozens more critically injured

By Tina Moore, Ben Kesslen, Steven Vago, C.J. Sullivan, Larry Celona and Reuven FentonJanuary 9, 2022 12:12pm  Updated

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At least 19 people were killed — including nine children —  when  the city’s deadliest fire in more than 30 years tore through a Bronx apartment high-rise Sunday morning.

Choking, blinding smoke trapped many of the victims of the five-alarm blaze, which was blamed on a malfunctioning space heater turned on to help ward off the cold temps outside, authorities said.

“I heard a lot of kids yelling, ‘ Help! Help! Help!’ ” resident Dilenny Rodriguez, 38, recalled of the screams echoing through her apartment on the ninth floor of   the 19-story building at 333 E. 181st St. in Tremont.

“It was dark. The smoke was really bad. Those kids crying for help,” the emotional woman said.

The blaze broke out just before 11 a.m. and was knocked down about an hour later — but not before what a shaken Mayor Eric Adams called “a horrific, horrific painful moment for the City of New York.”

A firefighter at the scene told The Post, “There were bodies being carried off every floor.”

In addition to the dead, at least 32  more people sustained life-threatening injuries, officials said.

A witness said mothers were falling to the ground in grief as they watched their children succumb.

“We saw moms fainting. They saw their kids dying,’’ said a 13-year-old named  Alanny, who spoke to The Post alongside her 27-year-old aunt.  

Around 200 FDNY members responded to battle the inferno, which officials say broke out in a duplex apartment spanning the second and third floors when the space heater malfunctioned in a bedroom.

 A door left open in the apartment where the fire originated allowed the smoke to spread throughout the building, officials said.

Engine 48 was the first team to respond to the fire but apparently was short-staffed because of the coronavirus.

“They only had four firefighters instead of the five they are called for because of people out sick because of COVID,” said the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association president Andrew Ansbro, calling the blaze the  worst  the city has seen since 9/11.

“We feel this is an absolute case where staffing would have made a difference.

“Several of the first engines were in the same situation. If there was adequate staffing, the fire could have been put out faster, and people would have received medical aid sooner,” he said.

FDNY officials denied the assertion, saying responding units were fully staffed at the time.

A resident told the Post that people might not have fled the building quickly enough because the fire alarm frequently  goes off, so they may have thought it was just another false alarm this time, too.

“The fire alarm goes off in the hallway all the time, at least twice a week,” said the 18th floor resident, who asked not to be named. “What do I do when I watch a movie? I put the volume up because it goes off all the time.

“I don’t know if it’s faulty or what it is. …. People on the third, fourth, fifth and went about their day until they saw smoke,” he said of Sunday’s blaze.

Fire officials said they would be looking into the fire-alarm system.

Among the dead was a 4-year old, according to police sources.

Cristal Diaz, 27, Alanny’s aunt and a resident of the 15th floor, grabbed cousins, her own aunt and dog “Fluffy” when she realized there was a fire.

“I was drinking coffee in the living room, and I started smelling smoke. We started putting water on towels and the bottom of the door. Everything was crazy,” Diaz said. “We didn’t know what to do. We looked out the windows and saw all the dead bodies they were taking with the blankets.”

Christopher Carrasquilo, 65, who lives next door to the building, ran over to help.

“A little kid was stuck in the elevator. I had to bring him down. It was something like 9/11,” Carrasquilo said with tears in his eyes.

The ages of the deceased have not been released.

The building was home to a large Muslim community.

“This is going to be one of the worst fires we have witnessed in the city of New York in modern times,” Adams said from the scene.

In December 2017, 13 people —including a year-old child — were killed when a Bronx apartment building went up in flames.

That fire was the deadliest New York City blaze since 87 people perished in March 1990 in the Happy Land social-club arson attack, which took place less than a mile away.

Among the 63 residents injured, 32 had life-threatening injuries, nine had serious injuries, and 22 were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, Adams said. One FDNY member was also injured and brought to the hospital.

Nigro said at a press conference that the department responded within 3 minutes.

“This smoke extended the entire height of the building, completely unusual,” he said. “Members found victims on every floor in stairwells.

“The door to that apartment was left open causing the fire to spread and smoke to spread, which is always a problem for us.

“As we see here by the broken windows throughout the building, this fire took its toll on our city.”

Ansbro said the mayor needs to reassess how he is staffing fire stations.

“I appreciate the mayor coming to the fire, but he needs to take a good look at staffing levels… Thirty years ago, there were five firefighters in every Engine Company.”

Adams said on MSNBC that the city has “an excellent system in place to get our apparatus there in the fastest time possible.”

“I am extremely encouraged by what I witnessed today,” the new mayor said. “Firefighters, some of them ran out of oxygen – the oxygen out of their tanks – but they still pushed through to rescue and save lives. And I’m extremely proud of the men and women who responded to this fire today.”

The building, which was constructed under federal guidelines and doesn’t have the same construction code as the city, currently stands as a shell of its former self, with windows on multiple floors broken.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who attended the briefing with Adams and Nigro, said she was “horrified by the devastating fire.”

“My heart is with the loved ones of all those we’ve tragically lost, all of those impacted and with our heroic FDNY firefighters,” she wrote on Twitter.