19th floor apartment fire in New York… 19 people died, including 9 children

A fire broke out in a 19-story apartment building in the Bronx area of ​​New York City on the 9th, killing 19 people, including 9 children, and injuring more than 60 people, The New York Times (NYT) and others reported. Most of the victims of the disaster were migrants from Africa who received government subsidies. At the time of the fire, most of the fire doors of the emergency stairway, which were the only way out, were open, and toxic gas rushed in through the gap, causing great casualties.

According to the New York City Fire Department, the fire is believed to have started around 11 a.m. that day when an electric heater ignited in a house on the third floor of an apartment in the Tremont district of the Bronx. The fire was extinguished with only a part of the three-story house and hallways burned, but as the smoke quickly spread to all floors through open fire doors, etc., victims of suffocation occurred one after another. Thirty-two residents were taken to the hospital in respiratory arrest, and 19 people had died so far this afternoon. Nine of the deaths were children under the age of 16.

Daniel Madrzykowski, director of the Fire Safety Research Institute, told the New York Times, “If you leave the door open, outside air flows in and acts like a pump to light the fire. It makes it difficult for people on the upper floors to escape from the bottom.”

The fire was built in 1972 with 120 apartments. It is known as a place where immigrants from Africa who mainly receive government housing subsidies live. The fire department said that the fire alarm in the building was working normally, and the neighbors around the apartment who heard the alarm reported the first fire. Some residents told the New York Times that fire alarms in their apartments sounded so often that they went off five or six times a day, causing residents to ignore the alarms.

Representative Rich Torres, Democrat, from the Bronx District, said, “The housing code requires that all apartments have basic safety features, such as fire doors and fire alarms, that automatically close to slow the spread of flames, but in this case, there is a gap between the regulations and the living environment. There was a difference,” he said.

Reporter Im Bo-mi bom@donga.com