NYC Apartment Fire One of Worst in History – NBC New York

Posted: January 9, 2022 at 4:28 pm

A horrifying apartment fire in the Bronx left 19 dead, including nine children, on Sunday, with dozens more injured.

Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday's blaze was the city's worst fire disaster since the infamous Happy Land arson in 1990, and the initial death toll confirms it will be recorded among the city's deadliest fires ever.

This is a look at some of the worst New York City fires of the last few decades.

A 58-year-old woman, her 7-month-old granddaughter, a mother and her 2- and 7-year-old daughters were among the 13 people who died when afast-moving fire caused by a child playing with a stove engulfed their Bronx apartment buildingin a matter of minutes just days after Christmas in 2017.

Authorities said the flames broke out on the first floor of the building and quickly spread up through the five-story, 25-unit structure. Authorities said Friday that asmall child playing with a stove in his first-floor kitchen appears to have sparked the blaze, which was the city's deadliest residential fire in decades.

UNITED STATES - MARCH 08: Firefighters tend to victims of three-alarm fire in apartment blaze at 1022 Woddycreast Ave., near W. 165th St. in High Bridge, the Bronx. The fire killed eight children and seriously injured 14 other people. (Photo by Ken Murray/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

A fire believed to have been caused by a space heater kills 10 people, most of them children, wiping out at least one entire family.

At the time, it was the city's deadliest fire since the Happyland disaster.

In this 1990 file photo, news crews report on an arson fire at the Happy Land social club in which 87 people perished, in the Bronx borough of New York. March 25, 2015, marks the quarter-century anniversary of what was then the biggest mass murder in modern U.S. history. (AP Photo)

On March 25, 1990, a Cuban refugee named Julio Gonzalez tried to win back the woman who had spurned him.

Gonzalez entered the Happy Land social club in the Bronx, which was humming with people mostly immigrants partying and dancing. His former live-in girlfriend, Lydia Feliciano, was checking coats, and they had a virulent argument. Gonzalez was thrown out.

In a rage, he returned just after 3 a.m., splashing gasoline on Happy Land's only guest exit and lighting two matches. Then he pulled down the metal front gate.

Within minutes, 87 people were dead.

UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 24: Firemen carry bodies after Club Puerto Rican fire. (Photo by Thomas Monaster/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

25 people are killed in an arson fire at the Puerto Rican Social Club in the Bronx. Authorities later said the fire was set by an angry clubgoer's spouse.

New York, N.Y.: Overview of New York City firemen standing waiting on October 18, 1966 as the search for victims continued in a fire and building collapse on Broadway between 22nd and 23rd Street in Manhattan. The disaster killed 12 firemen, 7 of them from Long Island. (Photo by Marvin Sussman/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

Some 12 FDNY firefighters are killed after a floor collapse while battling a blaze in Manhattan in Oct. 1966. It remained the deadliest day in the FDNY's history until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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NYC Apartment Fire One of Worst in History - NBC New York

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