(New York) Treize personnes, dont sept enfants, sont mortes dans un incendie touchant un petit immeuble d’habitations en plein centre de Philadelphie, dans l’est des États-Unis, ont annoncé les pompiers de la ville mercredi.
« Pour l’instant, le bilan est de 13 (morts) », a déclaré un représentant des pompiers sur place, Craig Murphy, en précisant que sept enfants faisaient partie des victimes.
« C’était terrible, […] it’s a terrible record, ”he continued during an impromptu press briefing broadcast live on Twitter. “This is one of the worst fires I have seen” in 35 years of practice, he added.
PHOTO MATT ROURKE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Philadelphia firefighters arrived at the scene at 6:40 am and had to deal with “an intense fire from the second floor of a house” which has three.
“This is without a doubt one of the most tragic days in our city’s history, the loss of so many people in such a tragic manner,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters.
Non-functional smoke detectors
Philadelphia firefighters arrived at the scene at 6:40 am and had to deal with “an intense fire from the second floor of a house” which has three. “It took 50 minutes to bring the fire under control,” they said.
The tragic fire took place in the central and residential neighborhood of Fairmont, where the great museums of Philadelphia are located, in a small building owned by the city.
U.S. media images show the building sits in the middle of a row of tiny houses, along a block that turns the corner from a side street. Several windows, from which the firefighters’ ladders come out, are completely blackened there, as well as part of the roof.
There were four smoke detectors, but none worked ”.
Fire Department Representative Craig Murphy
He added that “a very large number of people” lived in a very small number of apartments.
According to a police source quoted by the local daily Philadelphia Inquirer, the building has two apartments.
According to Craig Murphy, eight people had managed to evacuate the scene of the fire and two others were hospitalized.
“We cannot pass judgment on the number of people who lived in this building,” added the mayor.
Firefighters and the town hall announced that an investigation was underway to determine the conditions under which the fire started.
“It’s not necessarily considered suspicious, but we have everyone on the bridge because of the scale of this fire,” the fire department representative told reporters.
In December 2017, a fire in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City killed 12 people including four children, the worst in 25 years in the city. It had been provoked by a three-and-a-half-year-old child playing with a gas stove.