Bronx Fire Started By Child Playing With Stove, Officials Say

NEW YORK, NY — A child playing with a stove started a massive fire that killed a dozen people in the Bronx Thursday night, officials said Friday morning.

"It seems like a horrible tragic accident," Mayor Bill de Blasio told WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Friday.

The 3-year-old boy was playing with burners in the kitchen of a first-floor apartment at 2363 Prospect Ave. in the Belmont neighborhood before the flames got out of control, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told reporters at the scene of the blaze on Friday.

The boy was out of his mother's view. She heard him screaming, saw the flames and smoke, and quickly fled with him and her other 2-year-old child without closing the apartment's door, Nigro said.

The flames traveled quickly up the stairwell in the five-story building, killing some people trying to escape on their way down, he said.

"The stairway acted like a chimney and took the fire so quickly up stairs that people had very little time to react," Nigro said.

The boy apparently had a history of playing with the stove, Nigro said.

The family of three escaped unscathed, but five people died in the building, while seven others were pronounced dead at hospitals later, officials said. Four children, including a 1-year-old girl, were among those killed.

Those killed include Amora Batiz, a 7-month-old baby girl; Kylie Francis, 2; Charmela Francis, 7; Karen Francis, 37; Shantay Young, 19; and Maria Batiz, 58; Gabriel Yaw Sarkookie, 48; Emmanuel Mensah, 28; Justice Opoku, 54; Solomon Donkor, 49; and Hannah Donkor, 17.

Four other people were hospitalized in critical condition. Firefighters rescued 12 more people who have recovered, officials said.

Firefighters got to the building just three minutes after the fire was first reported at 6:51 p.m. As many as 20 people were outside on fire escapes when they arrived, Nigro said. Several of the deaths occurred "very early in the operation," he said.

The 25-unit apartment building had six open building violations, including two for a broken smoke detector and broken carbon monoxide detector on the first floor.

Fire officials are still uncertain whether every apartment, including the one where the fire started, had working smoke detectors, Nigro said. The commissioner said there was nothing structurally "unusual" about the building that made the blaze worse.

The fire was the deadliest in New York City since 1980, when an arson at the Bronx's Happy Land nightclub killed 87 people.

The blaze struck an ethnically diverse, working-class neighborhood near Fordham University. Some of those killed hailed from Jamaica, according to a statement from that country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade.

"This loss is unprecedented," Nigro said. "It is a time of year when people are certainly celebrating and people have lost their lives, lost their homes, lost everything."

The NYPD and de Blasio's office will host a clothing drive from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday to benefit those affected by the fire. City workers will be collecting donations at the Church of St. Martin of Tours at 2239 Crotona Ave. in the Bronx.

(Lead image: Firefighters battle a blaze in the Bronx that killed 12 people on Thursday. Photo by Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office.)