12 dead in massive apartment blaze, New York City’s ‘worst fire tragedy’ in decades

FAN Editor

At least 12 people, including a 1-year-old girl found with her mother in a bathtub, have died in a massive apartment fire in New York City on Thursday night, city officials said.

Calling it “one of the worst losses of life in many, many years,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that another four people who were critically injured in the blaze were “fighting for their lives.”

“This is the worst fire tragedy we have seen in this city in at least a quarter-century,” de Blasio told reporters.

“The search of the building continues so we know that even though it’s horrible to report 12 are dead already, we may lose others as well,” the mayor said.

The fire broke out in the five-story brick apartment building on Prospect Avenue in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx at about 7 p.m. and quickly spread.

New York City Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said it started on the first floor and spread upstairs.

More than 160 firefighters braved frigid temperatures to battle the flames and had put it out by about 10 p.m., according to the city fire department. The instability of the charred building has not allowed firefighters to make a full sweep of the building for any more fatalities.

Investigators are working to determine the cause and why the blaze moved so quickly. They are looking at the possibility that the fire burned into a natural gas line in the building, according to city officials.

At least one person on every floor of the five-story building was killed, according to city officials. Five people were pronounced dead on the scene, and seven later died in area hospitals.

Among the dead were four children — three girls ages 1, 2 and 7 and a young boy whose age has yet to be released.

“They were burned, even little kids on the stretchers, burned,” a resident of the building told WABC.

Four women were killed, including three ages 19, 37 and 63 and one who has yet to be identified. The dead also include four men whose identities are not yet known.

One family is still looking for a missing son, according to ABC station WABC in New York City.

“I came out through the window. Yeah, there was smoke everywhere. I couldn’t see the door. The door was … I couldn’t see the door. Was covered in smoke already,” Matthew Igbinetion, a resident of the building, told WABC.

The fire is the city’s deadliest, excluding the Sept. 11 attacks, since the Happy Land fire at a nightclub in the Bronx in March 1990, which killed 87 people.

ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

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