According to the Police there are nine children among them, as well as more than 60 injured and some seriously, while the Firefighters have mobilized more than 200 troops
At least 19 people died this Sunday – including nine children – and another 63 were injured, some in serious condition, in a fire declared in a 19-story apartment block in the New York neighborhood of the Bronx. This is stated in its latest official balance sheet by the Police of the considered financial capital of the United States.
The New York Fire Department reported, for its part, that about 200 troops have been mobilized to combat the intense flames, according to the newspaper ‘The New York Post’. Several sources cited by that means indicate that one of the fatalities would be a four-year-old boy. “They were removing bodies from all the floors. It is the worst fire I have seen in 30 years, ”said a firefighter.
The mayor of New York, Eric Adams himself, has traveled to the scene of the tragedy to supervise the tasks of helping the victims and the work of extinguishing the fire. “It is going to be one of the worst fires of modern times in New York City,” he warned, according to Europa Press.
However, the Uniformed Firefighters Association has denounced the lack of personnel in the trucks that were arriving at the scene. “There were four firefighters instead of five (in the first truck) because of lack of personnel due to the coronavirus,” warned the president of the association, Andrew Ansbro.
“Several of the trucks that arrived first were in the same situation. If there had been enough personnel, the fire could have been extinguished earlier and medical attention would have been given earlier, ”said this same professional. This issue will presumably be the subject of controversy in the coming days.
“All crazy”
One of the neighbors of the damaged building, Cristal Díaz, 27, managed to flee from the 15th floor with her cousins, her aunt and her dog. “I was having coffee in the living room when I smelled the smoke. We wet towels to put them under the doors. It was all crazy, “he said while the calls continued to devour part of the building.
Another neighbor advised, for his part, that many people had not left their apartments because they did not take the sound alerts seriously, since it is not uncommon for the fire alarm to sound about twice a week.
The flames reportedly started in the lower floors of the tower of flats and the first flames could be seen from the outside in a window on the third floor. The firefighters decided to deploy several escalators at different heights to try to facilitate the evacuation. All this despite the difficulties that the low temperatures that New York suffers these days were causing as night approached.
So far, the most serious and deadliest fire in an apartment building in the United States since 2017 took place last Wednesday in Philadelphia. Specific. 13 people died in an apartment in a fire that, according to a boy of just five years old, started when he was playing with a lighter next to the Christmas tree, where the flame immediately lit.
.
#dead #apartment #block #caught #fire #Yorks #Bronx