New York apartment fire: at least 12 people killed in Bronx

At least 12 people, including a child, have died in a blaze at a Bronx apartment building on a frigid night, New York City’s mayor has said.

Calling it an “unspeakable tragedy”, Bill de Blasio said one of the victims was an infant and four other people were critically injured. Visiting the scene, the mayor said: “This will rank as one of the worst losses of life to a fire in many, many years.”

He praised firefighters for saving 12 people from the blaze, which is now under control after breaking out just before 7pm at a five-storey building a block from the Bronx Zoo.

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.

Nigro said the fire started on the first floor and quickly spread upstairs. People died on multiple floors, and ranged in age from one to over 50.

More than 160 firefighters worked in bone-chilling cold, just 15 degrees, to rescue people from the building as the fire quickly spread. A nearby school has been set up to shelter evacuees on a bitterly cold night. Water sprayed from hoses froze into ice on the street.

Witnesses recounted their ordeal. Fifty-nine-year-old Thierno Diallo said he was asleep in his ground-floor apartment when he heard banging on the door. He said he heard people screaming, “There’s a fire in the building!”, prompting him to run out in his bathrobe, jacket and sandals.

Ana Santiago, who lives in an adjoining building, told the New York Times she fled when she smelled the smoke and saw young girls who had escaped the fire standing on the fire escape in bare feet with no coats.

Neighborhood 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 New York’s deadliest fires in recent memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.

Friday 29 December 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/29/new-york-fire-bronx-apartment--deaths

Huge fire at Mumbai restaurant kills at least 14

At least 14 people were killed when a huge blaze tore through a popular restaurant in Mumbai early on Friday, police said, in the latest disaster to raise concerns over fire safety in India.

Many of the victims were young women who were attending a birthday party on the rooftop when the fire broke out. Doctors said they died of asphyxiation, apparently as they tried to flee the burning building.

Local media reported that a false ceiling had collapsed in the four-storey building in the Indian financial capital, trapping people inside as they tried to escape.

The fire was extinguished in the early hours but an AFP reporter at the scene said the rooftop where the party was taking place had been gutted, with charred ice buckets and ashtrays strewn around.

“Fourteen people have succumbed to their injuries and remaining victims have been discharged from the KEM hospital. Most of the deaths were due to asphyxiation,” Avinash Supe, dean of local KEM hospital told AFP.

Police said they were investigating the cause of the fire, and had filed a preliminary case against the restaurant’s owners.

Eleven of the victims were female partygoers, according to authorities.

One woman who said she was in the building at the time told of the desperate scenes as people tried to escape.

“There was a stampede and someone pushed me,” Sulbha Arora said on Twitter.

“People were running over me even as the ceiling above me was collapsing in flames. Still don’t know how I got out alive. Some powers were definitely protecting me.”

Television footage of the latest disaster showed fire engines and emergency teams rushing to the scene as the building was being consumed by flames and dark plumes of smoke rose into the night sky.

Firefighter Sanjay Hiwarle told reporters the blaze was brought under control during the night and a “cooling operation” was under way.

The restaurant was in the city’s Kamala Mills compound, which also houses hotels and offices.

Friday 29 December 2017

http://gulftoday.ae/portal/31b64222-ae14-4720-a6d2-0ac2a062e827.aspx

Tanzania: Boat Disaster Toll Rises to 19 After Recovery of Six Bodies

Six more bodies of passengers who drowned in Lake Tanganyika after two boats collided in Uvinza District early on Friday were recovered yesterday.

The recovery took to 19 the number of people confirmed dead in the accident, according to the Principal Officer of the Surface and Marine Transport and Regulatory Authority (Sumatra) in Kigoma Region, Mr Amaniel Sekulu.

The boats - MV Atakalo Mola, which was carrying 65 passengers, and MV Pasaka, which had 137 passengers on board - collided, with MV Pasaka capsizing at around 3am on Friday.

Many of the passengers on board MV Pasaka were worshipers from the Pentecostal Church of God (PCG), who were heading to join neighbouring church congregations for Christmas celebrations.

Authorities said 22 passengers were feared to have drowned after the accident.

Mr Sekulu said a recovery operation was still going on.

"There are passengers who are still missing, and that is why the recovery operation is still going on. If nobody else is found alive, then we at least have to find the bodies of the missing passengers," he said.

The operation involved divers from the Police Marine Unit, Tanzania People's Defence Force and local fishing villages. Most of the passengers who drowned in the tragedy were choir members from the PCG church in Kalilani Village.

A choir member with the Tanzania Assemblies of God (TAG) in Lubengela Village, Mr Kitendo Abasi, told The Citizen on Friday that 30 PCG members were on the boat when the accident occurred.

"Many of the church members boarded the boat on the journey to the villages of Buhingu, Igalula, Mgambazi and Sigunga," he noted.

Mr Abasi added that he had escorted the church members to board the boat.

The accident occurred shortly before the boat was about to dock at Lubengela Village to pick up more church members.

Friday 29 December 2017

http://allafrica.com/stories/201712270075.html