Residents of a Bronx apartment building are still displaced and dealing with the aftermath of a fatal fire that tore through the building on Wednesday, leaving one of their neighbors dead and another with both legs broken after he jumped out a fourth-floor window.
Ring camera footage that was widely shared on social media and viewed by Gothamist shows a man lighting something in his hands. “I’m sorry guys,” he can be heard saying as the small fire grows in his hand.
Police had not yet announced any arrests or publicly identified any suspects in the incident as of Thursday afternoon.
The video shows firefighters responding with hoses and fire extinguishers. They crouch low and work to put out the flames, which are leaping from the door of an apartment at the corner of the fourth-floor landing. By the end of the clip, the entire hallway and stairwell are choked with gray and black smoke.
Officials say 10 residents were injured in the blaze, including the man who jumped. Police said he remained in critical but stable condition on Thursday. They did not immediately identify the man who died.
Fifth-floor resident Sandra Willmore said she spent most of Wednesday in the hospital being treated for smoke inhalation that was complicated by her asthma. After that, Willmore said, she was sent to a shelter in Queens, where she spent an uncomfortable night alone.
“I'm claustrophobic, and the room was very small, and being out down there, so far, by myself, it was giving me depression.” Willmore said she requested a transfer to a shelter in the Bronx, closer to where some of her other neighbors were placed.
“Today I feel a little better. I'm just stuffy and my chest is a little tight still,” she said, adding that being in the hospital on Wednesday meant she was unable to go back into the building to grab any essentials. “I don’t have no clothes, nothing at all.”
Willmore said she wasn’t sure when she and other neighbors would be allowed to re-enter the building.
