FDNY commissioner: At least 19 dead in Bronx fire caused by malfunctioning electric space heater

At least 19 people, nine of them children, were killed Sunday in a Bronx apartment building fire that was caused by a malfunctioning electric space heater, according to FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro.

It was New York City's deadliest fire in nearly 32 years.

"The numbers are horrific," Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday. "This is going to be one of the worst fires that we have witnessed during modern times."

"Over 30 people in the hospital. Nineteen deaths. Nine of them are children, are babies, that we lost, and we're all feeling this," he said.

The blaze, at the Twin Parks North West apartment building on E. 181st Street in the Tremont neighborhood of the Bronx, started just after 11 a.m., according to the FDNY.

The children killed were 16 years old or younger, said Adams' senior adviser Stefan Ringel. More than 60 people were hurt. Most had severe smoke inhalation, Nigro said.

The fire's origin was the bedroom of a duplex apartment on the building’s second and third floors, Nigro said. The flames consumed the entire apartment and part of the hallway. The door stayed open after the occupants of that duplex fled, causing the smoke to spread throughout the building.

"Thus the tremendous loss of life and other people fighting for their lives right now in hospitals all over the Bronx," Nigro said.

It was not clear why the door did not shut automatically, as required by law, and Adams said that the fire marshal's investigation would examine why not.

In addition, Nigro said, a stairwell door was left open on an upper floor, further allowing smoke to continue upward.

There were at least two violations listed on the building, but they were unrelated to heat, Adams said.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, also speaking at the fire scene, said she visited with victims' grief-stricken families, including those who have been left without a home.

"We are indeed a city in shock. It’s impossible to go into that room, where scores of family who are in such grief, who are in pain, to see it in a mother’s eyes as I held her, who lost her entire family," Hochul said. "It’s hard to fathom what they’re going through."

Thirteen people remained hospitalized in critical condition, Ringel said late Sunday afternoon. Nigro said the building heat had been on, and that the space heater was being used to supplement the building heat.

Firefighters "found victims on every floor and were taking them out in cardiac and respiratory arrest," Nigro said. "That is unprecedented in our city."

Approximately 200 firefighters responded to the fire call, and the first personnel were on scene within three minutes, Nigro said.

Don Hayde of Baldwin, a retired FDNY firefighter who was a battalion chief, spoke in general about how firefighters would respond to a fire of this magnitude. He said some department members would have stretched fire hose line, with others going door to door to search for those trapped inside. Stranded occupants would be rescued. And firefighters would be on standby to relieve firefighters whose air runs out.

"Each one of those apartments has to be gotten into, forcible entry has to be taking place to get into the apartments, to get through the door. That’s time-consuming. It takes a couple guys, and this is all under arduous, smoke-filled conditions," he said.

The building is co-owned by Camber Property Group, according to city property records, which develops below-market-rate housing in the borough. One of the company's founders, Rick Gropper, was named as a member of Adams' mayoral transition team last month, focused on housing. The company could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Adams called the neighborhood where the fire happened "a heavy immigrant community," with some building residents Muslims from Gambia, a small West African country near Senegal. He promised that victims could register for help without fear of being reported to the federal immigration authorities — for potentially being in the country illegally.

Families who want to find out about whether their loved ones are missing, perished or hospitalized can call the city's hotline 311 or 212-NEW-YORK from out of town.

Resident Stephant Beuvsnu told WABC-Channel 7 that he fell and broke his tooth while trying to escape the blaze.

"My teeth broke because I could not see where I'm going," Beuvsnu said. "So where [I] put the garbage down, that's the place, I opened, I thought that's the door, so when I went, I got hit, I fell back."

Julia Fowler told Channel 7 she was able to escape the fire with her young son. She lamented the tragedy and the loss of life.

"To see that my neighbors, even if I didn’t talk to them ... just to see them come out in stretchers, these babies coming out in stretchers, it’s a hard thing to see and it hurts," Fowler said.

Delaney Rodriguez, a resident of the building's 12th floor, said she stayed in her apartment until the firefighters rescued her and her family.

"We went inside my bedroom because it was better for us to breathe," Rodriguez told Channel 7. She described the scene of a firefighter attempting to rescue others.

"They were trying to rescue more people," she said. "Trying to give them CPR and it got to the point that I almost got lost because it was dark."

The building, 19 stories tall with 120 units, was built in 1972 as part of an effort to put up modern, below-market-rate housing in the Bronx.

"There’s no guarantee that there’s a working fire alarm in every apartment, or in every common area," Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat who represents the area, told The Associated Press, speaking of housing in the borough in general. "Most of these buildings have no sprinkler system. And so the housing stock of the Bronx is much more susceptible to devastating fires than most of the housing stock in the city."

The building has interior stairways to be used for emergency exit, according to Nigro. The commissioner added that there are smoke alarms throughout the building, and the fire was first reported by a neighbor who heard one of those alarms.

"Residents should know where the stairwells are, and I think some of them could not escape because of the volume of smoke," Nigro said.

Nigro and Torres both likened the severity of the fire to what happened on March 25, 1990, at the Happy Land Social Club, where 87 people were killed after a man set fire to a Bronx building. He had gotten into an argument with his ex-girlfriend and was tossed out by a bouncer.

The death toll on Sunday was the worst in a fire in the city since Happy Land. It was the deadliest fire in a U.S. residential apartment building since 2017, when 13 people died elsewhere in the Bronx, The Associated Press reported.

Other deadly New York fires included one at the Puerto Rican Social Club in 1976 when 25 died, at a loft on Broadway near Houston Street in 1958, with 24 dead, and another at Manhattan State Hospital in 1923, when 27 died.

Another of the deadliest fires in New York City history occurred at Manhattan's Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911, when 146 people died in a tragedy that led to stronger workers rights, unions and workplace safety.

Sunday's fire came days after one in Philadelphia in which 12 people, eight of whom were children, died in blaze at a house.

With The Associated Press and Darwin Yanes

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.