FORDHAM, The Bronx (WABC) — A mother lost her youngest child, and two of her other children remain in critical condition after a devastating fire at an apartment building in the Fordham section of the Bronx on Monday.
Seven people were injured in total. The child who died has been identified as 1-year-old Liam Parks. His 6-year-old twin siblings were hurt in the blaze.
FDNY officials say the fire started just before 3:40 p.m. at a six-story apartment building at 2609 Bainbridge Ave. and East 193rd and 194th streets.
A neighbor told Eyewitness News that the flames broke out in the second-floor apartment of a woman with four children.
A 29-year-old good Samaritan, who asked not to be identified, said the mother left her kids so she could go downstairs and wait for a bus to drop off her 17-year-old. The father was at work at the time.
“She wasn’t even downstairs. Not even, not even five minutes. Not even five minutes she was downstairs, and the next second I look up, I just see black smoke coming out of a window,” he said.
He was across the street when the mother noticed smoke coming out of a window in her apartment. She was standing just outside of the front door of the building waiting for the bus.
“Once we saw the smoke, we ran upstairs to go and save her babies,” the good Samaritan said.
He said they both raced upstairs and were met by flames when they opened the door.
“The fire was already spreading through the whole house. So, all we could do was look. And she was just screaming and crying and screaming and crying,” the good Samaritan said.
It would take firefighters battling through the smoke that had filled the hallway to get the three smallest children out. They were in critical condition.
The children were taken to St. Barnabas, but the youngest child, Liam, died from his injuries. His siblings remain in critical condition and have been moved to the burn unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Two adults and three firefighters are also recovering from non-life-threatening injuries.
More than 20 units, and 80 fire and EMS personnel responded to the scene, placing the fire under control about an hour later around 4:40 p.m.
FDNY officials believe that doors left open as occupants fled may have helped the fire spread, as has been the case in several recent fires in New York City.
“We’ve had several of these fires lately where the occupants of the fire apartment have fled the building and left the fire apartment open. That appears to be the case here again,” said FDNY Chief of Operations Malcolm Moore.
While closing the door may not have changed the tragic outcome in that apartment, officials say it would have prevented the oxygen-hungry flames from sweeping up the hallway, causing more injury and damage.
“The minute you close the door, you give everyone else in the building an opportunity to flee, and you give yourself more time to flee in not allowing the fire to chase behind you,” Moore said.
The American Red Cross says they have registered 38 people for emergency assistance.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
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