NEW YORK – A massive blaze ripped through an apartment building in the Bronx town of New York killing 12 people including four children, in the city’s deadliest fire in at least a quarter of a century.
The fire broke out a little before 7 p.m. (0000 GMT) on Thursday on the first floor of a brick building and quickly spread upstairs, city Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told newsmen with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“We’re here at the scene of an unspeakable tragedy. In the middle of the holiday season is a time when families are together. Tonight, here in the Bronx, there are families that have been torn apart,” de Blasio said.
The local media reported that Children aged one, two and seven and an unidentified boy died in the fire along with four men and four women, and, according to the mayor, four people were in hospital in critical condition “fighting for their lives”.
The fire erupted in the Belmont section of the Bronx, a primarily residential neighbourhood dubbed as the ‘Little Italy’ of the borough, adjacent to the Bronx Zoo and Fordham University.
It was the second deadly New York residential blaze in less than two weeks as a mother and three children were killed in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn when a fire tore through their home on December 18.
