Fire in New York, a building in the Bronx on fire: dead and wounded
Fire and flames in the neighborhood of the Bronx in New York: around eleven in the morning a fire in a nineteen-story building on 181st Street West, near Fordham University, a social housing district. The balance for now ascertained is nineteen dead, including nine minors, including some very young children, e sixty-three injured.
The name and age of the victims, at the moment, have not been provided but given the first balance, this is considered the worst fire in New York in the last thirty years. Of the 63 injured, most are victims of smoke fumes, some have had an onset of cardiocirculatory arrest. Admitted to five hospitals, 32 people are in danger of life, while for another nine there is talk of “serious conditions”.
The fire broke out in a duplex apartment, between the second and third floors, and from there it spread quickly upwards, favored by the fact that the door of the house was open. The building is of the “beehive” style, with one hundred and twenty apartments. The flames quickly occupied the landing, and reached other homes so quickly that it recalled the tragic precedent of just four days ago when, in Philadelphia, a fire caused twelve deaths, including eight minors.
In that case there was talk of overheating of a Christmas tree and failure to activate the anti-fire system. Even in the devastating Bronx fire there may have been a malfunction of the alarms. Witnesses said they only became aware of the fire after hearing screams coming from the landing, a detail that could suggest a security system malfunction.
In buildings throughout most of America, at least one alert is generally installed, which clicks at the first appearance of smoke and sets off a deafening siren. Many apartments are also equipped with water diffusers, the so-called “sprinklers”, which start automatically in the presence of smoke. Maybe they weren’t there, maybe they weren’t activated.
“This is what we want to ascertain – said the new mayor, Eric Adams – who personally followed the intervention – we will go all the way with the investigation. This is a terrible, terrible tragedy ”. “The people – added the fire brigade commissioner, Dan Nigro – were trapped in the apartments “. The two hundred firefighters, who took two hours to extinguish the fire, found people passed out or dead on every floor of the building. Adams and Nigro called the fire the “worst in New York in more than thirty years”.
The last major tragedy occurred on March 25, 1990 when the flames, set in the illegal nightclub in Happy Land, in the Bronx, killed 87 people. In addition to the absence of fire-fighting systems, all exits were blocked.
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