9 Killed in Bronx Fire; Space Heater May Be to Blame

By Mary Mitchell

Published on March 08, 2007

Four families with 17 children among them lived in the building. As the fire blazed at approximately 11 p.m., a woman on the second floor tossed two children out of a window in an attempt to save them. Each child landed in the arms of an onlooker. Five children from 2 to 6 years old were taken to Jacobi Medical Center with burns and smoke inhalation injuries. Ten people remain hospitalized.

New York Fire Department investigators suspect that a space heater or overloaded power strip may have caused the fire, which destroyed the basement and first floor. It took two hours for the firefighters to get the blaze under control. The home apparently had two smoke alarms, both of which had no battery.

It is known that the families at the building were originally from Mali, in West Africa. According to a neighbor, one of the families ran an import-export business. Thursday morning, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed the city’s grief at the loss of life, especially that of the children, and noted that this fire is the city’s deadliest since the Happy Land nightclub fire in 1990.

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