NEW YORK — One person died and 11 others -- including four firefighters -- were injured on Wednesday after an explosion caused a large fire in a New York City apartment, fire officials said.
According to the New York City Fire Department, crews responded to a fire in the Bronx neighborhood of Norwood at about 12:30 p.m. ET.
The firefighters “encountered heavy fire,” with flames observed in multiple windows of the five-story building.
The blaze was classified as a five-alarm fire shortly after 2 p.m. ET and was not brought under control until after 8 p.m., WABC reported.
“There was some sort of explosion. It blew out window frames, it blew some of them across the street, and when our members got up to the second floor, some of the apartment doors had been blown off their hinges,” NYFD Chief of Department John Esposito said in a statement. “This makes it very difficult to confine the fire while we’re also conducting searches. It was a very unusual and an extremely dangerous position for our firefighters.”
More than 300 fire and EMS members responded to the blaze, Esposito added. Members were evacuated after there was a collapse on the third floor.
Seven civilians and four firefighters were injured.
“It sounded like the world was coming to an end,” one woman who lives near the apartment building, told WPIX. “It sounded like a bomb went off.”
The deceased person was not discovered until search-and-rescue teams combed through the building fire hours after it started, WABC reported.
“We had multiple people who needed to be rescued out of the building. Our FDNY firefighters and EMS members did an extraordinary job -- there were multiple examples of heroism,” FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said in a statement. “The firefighters were rescuing people from the building and EMS was providing lifesaving treatment right on the scene, saving multiple lives.”
The cause of the explosion remains unclear, WABC reported.
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