12 dead in fast-moving New York City apartment fire

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says investigators believe a Bronx fire that killed 12 was caused by a child playing with a stove.

De Blasio said Friday on WNYC that four people are still fighting for their lives following the fire Thursday night in the Bronx.

The New York Police Department says those who died include girls ages 1, 2 and 7, and a boy. His age was not given.

Some residents made it down fire escapes. But the flames moved so fast that many never made it out of their apartments.

Witnesses describe seeing burned bodies being carried away on stretchers and young girls who had escaped standing barefoot outside with no coats.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called the fire, “historic in its magnitude,” because of the number of lives lost.

“Our hearts go out to every person who lost a loved one here and everyone who is fighting for their lives,” he said.

The blaze broke out at a five-story building, a block from the grounds of the Bronx Zoo.

About 170 firefighters worked in bone-chilling cold, just 15 degrees, to rescue people from the building. Water sprayed from hoses froze into ice on the street.

The fire began on the first floor just before 7 p.m. and quickly ripped through much of the building, officials said.

Neighbourhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, said she got out on a fire escape as another resident fled with five children.

“When I got here, she was crying,” Gonzalez said.

Windows on some upper floors were smashed and blackened.

“The smoke was crazy, people screaming, ‘Get out!,'” a witness, Jamal Flicker, told the New York Post. “I heard a woman yelling, ‘We’re trapped, help!'”

According to city records, the building had no elevator. Fire escapes were visible on the facade of the building.

One of the deadliest fires in recent city memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.