One person was killed and 10 others were hurt – including a man who desperately jumped from a fourth-floor window – when a massive blaze ripped through a Bronx apartment building Wednesday morning, according to officials and sources.
The two-alarm inferno broke out around 7:45 a.m. on the fourth floor of the six-story building on Montgomery Avenue near West 175th Street in Morris Heights, the FDNY said.
Ring camera footage obtained by CBS New York shows heavy flames shooting up in front of what appears to be an apartment door, filling the hall with smoke – before three firefighters arrived and quickly worked to douse the fire.
“Units made an aggressive interior attack, but during the course of the fire, the fire spread to an adjoining apartment, two apartments above and up into the cockloft space, which is the area between the top floor ceiling and the roof,” Deputy Chief Andrew Holzmaier told reporters.
One unidentified adult couldn’t escape the burning building and was pronounced dead at the scene, while a 31-year-old man plunged from a fourth-floor window, according to authorities and sources.
The man who jumped suffered burns and other injuries, and was taken to Jacobi Medical Center, where he was listed in critical but stable condition, cops said.
“When units arrived, there was one civilian on the sidewalk who they said had jumped out the window to escape the flames,” Holzmaier said.
Five more civilians suffered minor non-life-threatening injuries, according to the FDNY.
Two firefighters had moderate injuries and two had minor injuries, but none were life-threatening, according to the department.
A total of 46 fire and EMS units, including 140 members, responded to the scene and the blaze was placed under control just before 10 a.m., the FDNY said.
The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
