Bronx fire that killed 12 people 'caused by child playing with stove'

It is the city’s deadliest fire in 25 years

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said investigators believe the Bronx fire which killed 12 people was caused by a child playing with a stove.

The four-alarm fire – five being the highest level of alert – began on Thursday evening in a neighbourhood near the Bronx Zoo and by the next morning had turned into the city’s deadliest blaze in nearly 25 years.

Mr De Blasio called it “an unspeakable tragedy in the middle of the holiday season” during a news conference at the scene, amid subfreezing temperatures in the city. His spokesperson Eric Phillips also announced the suspected cause of the fire on Twitter.

Among the victims was a one-year-old child found in a bathtub being cradled by its mother. Both perished. A two-year-old and seven-year-old were also among the 12 victims. Four people remain in critical condition.

At least 14 people were injured, including seven emergency response staff. The Washington Post said officials believed the fire was started by a three-year-old playing with rings on a stove. The fate of that child was not immediately known.

Firefighters responded within a few minutes of the initial emergency call at 7pm local time, with 170 of them on the scene within three hours working to put out the blaze and rescue any residents trapped in the five-storey building with 25 apartments.

New York City Fire Department commissioner Daniel ­Nigro said the fire began on the first floor, and residents said they were surprised at how quickly the flames spread in the nearly century-old residence.

One man, Jamal Flicker, told the New York Post: “The smoke was crazy, people screaming, ‘Get out!’ I heard a woman yelling, ‘We’re trapped! Help’.”

Due to where the fire started, investigators said it blocked the main stairwell in the building, one of the major escape routes.

Mr Nigro said “people died on various floors of the apartment” and confirmed the investigation will continue.

Though the building was not new enough to require state-of-the-art fire and smoke detection or a sprinkler system, it was still subject to minimum building codes of the city.

According to records from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the building had at least one open violation “involving a defective carbon monoxide detector, and a faulty smoke detector in a unit on its first floor,” according to the New York Post.

The violation had been reported back in August 2017.

However, it remains unknown at this time what, if any, actions were taken by building owners – listed as D&A Equities – to remedy the problem.

“The building owner, building management is supposed to make sure that all those basic safety precautions are in place, and this is an older building,” Mr De Blasio told CNN, adding that fire investigators will need more time to look into the incident.

Speaking on a city radio station, he said the fire appeared to be “accidental from everything we can see”.