‘Indispensable’: New York community after deadly fire | Infrastructure News

Sadness and grief spread to a community in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City a day later destructive fire and suffocating smoke engulfed a high-rise home, killing 17 people, eight of them children.

Survivors recalled the frantic chaos of their escape on Monday as family and friends of the dead faced shock, disbelief and grief.

“Some people don’t know that their relatives are gone,” said Fathia Touray, whose mother and siblings lived on the third floor of the building where the fire broke out.

A sister was taken to hospital but is now in a stable condition, while the rest of her family has fled, Touray told the Associated Press news agency, from her home in the United Arab Emirates.

Renee Howard, 68, was shocked as she talked about lost lives.

“I have never experienced such a catastrophe. My neighbor died, my children died, I don’t understand, I don’t understand, ”she said as she began to sob. All of those lives, he said, were “taken away in a second.”

Firefighters determined the fire through physical evidence and residents’ accounts began with a portable electric heater in a one-bedroom one-bedroom apartment in a 19-story Twin Parks North West apartment in a 19-story Twin Parks North West building that offered cheap housing to low-income New Yorkers.

The heat was on in the apartment building and the portable heater was said to be completing that heating.

The flames damaged only a small part of the building, but the smoke flowed through the open door of the apartment and turned the stairs into a dark death trap drowned in ashes. Stairs were the only escape in a tower that was too high for fire escape.

Officials say it has been the deadliest fire in three decades. Mayor Eric Adams, who has been working for just over a week, said Monday morning that several people were still in critical condition.

“It’s a global tragedy, as the Bronx and New York City represent ethnicities and cultures from around the world,” Adams said in a news release in front of the building. “This is an evolutionary crisis. An impossible tragedy. ‘

New York authorities also said the city was investigating a “maintenance problem” with doors that did not close when the fire broke out.

Adams said he had spoken with U.S. President Joe Biden, who promised that the White House would provide “everything New York City needs” after the fire.

It is likely that the disaster would raise questions about security standards in low-income urban housing. The second major fire in a U.S. residential complex this week resulted in the deaths of 12 people, including eight children, in a U.S. public housing building in Philadelphia.

Dangerous white-clad cleaning crews were cleaning Bronx glass and sidewalk debris on Monday as firefighters and firefighters continued to examine the interior and exterior of the building. The street was cut off and a small group of people gathered there, some of whom brought clothes and other donations to help the victims.

In Masjid-ur-Rahmah, a mosque a few blocks from the apartment building, more than two dozen people gathered in solidarity. Many who pray in the mosque live in the building.

A dozen women wept inside the mosque, mourning the loss of three small children in the fire. Members of the congregation were not sure whether the parents of the children would survive, and many relatives feared the worst.

Dangerous dressed cleaning and recovery teams arrived on Monday to help [Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo]

“We are turning to God and turning to God,” said Imam Mosque Musa Kabba, who urged relatives to be patient while they wait for news of their relatives.

Many who lived in the apartment complex formed an entire community, and it soon became clear who could be killed between smoke and fire.

“I feel sorry for the people who have lost their children and mothers because we are all one. And for that to happen, it’s horrible, ”said Tysena Jacobs, a neighbor of the Jacobs building.

Mahamadou Toure tried to find words outside an emergency room at the hospital just hours after the fire took the life of his 5-year-old daughter and her teenage brother.

“Right now my heart is very …” Toure tried to tell the Daily News before composing. “All right. I’ll give it to God,” he continued.