Mayor Eric Adams said Monday that officials are looking into whether a “maintenance issue” with an apartment door allowed thick smoke from a fire that killed 19 people, including nine children, to spread throughout a high-rise building in the Bronx.
On Sunday, a malfunctioning space heater in the bedroom of a third-floor apartment started a fire. According to fire officials, the apartment door did not close as residents fled, allowing smoke to spread throughout the building.
“It appears that the ability to spread smoke is due to the door being open,” Mr. Adams explained on Good Morning America. “There could have been a maintenance issue with this door,” he added, “and that will be part of the ongoing investigation.”
Apartment doors in New York City are required by law to close automatically. According to Mr. Adams, the apartments in the building have self-closing doors.
“The building’s doors did have self-closing mechanisms. “We’re only looking at that one door,” the mayor said on CNN.
During an initial round of television and radio media appearances, Mr. Adams stated that the city planned to increase awareness efforts to ensure that residents close the door to their apartments if they are fleeing a fire. The fire was mostly contained to the apartment with the space heater and an adjacent hallway, but smoke spread throughout the building’s 19 floors.
“It was the smoke, not the fire, that took these lives,” Mr. Adams said on 1010 WINS.
According to fire officials, the malfunctioning space heater could have been running for several days. The heat was working in the apartment, but the heater was only being used as a backup, according to fire officials on Sunday.
When the door to an apartment was left open, a fire in the Bronx that killed 13 people in 2017 was able to spread throughout the building.
Thirteen people were still in critical condition on Monday after an apartment fire started by a malfunctioning space heater sent smoke billowing through a Bronx high-rise, killing 19 people, including nine children, according to officials.
Mayor Eric Adams has expressed concern that the death toll may rise. “We may be increasing the loss of life,” he said on Monday during a television interview.
“Smoke spread throughout the building, resulting in a tremendous loss of life and other people fighting for their lives,” said Daniel A. Nigro, the fire commissioner, at a news conference at the scene on Sunday.
The smoke from the fire spread to the top of the 19-story building, darkening hallways and stairwells and shocking residents who had heard the fire alarms but did not immediately react because they had grown accustomed to the building’s frequent alarms. Firefighters discovered victims on every floor and worked to save them even as their own oxygen tanks ran low, according to Commissioner Nigro.
The death toll from the fire was the highest in the city since 87 people died in an intentionally set fire at a Bronx nightclub in 1990, and it served as an early litmus test for the city’s new mayor, Eric Adams. “The figures are appalling,” Mr. Adams said.
He promised that the city would help the victims, many of whom are Muslim immigrants from the West African country of Gambia.
Mr. Adams urged all injured and displaced victims to seek medical attention and assured those who may be undocumented that their information would not be shared with federal immigration authorities.