A 31-year-old man leaped from a fourth-floor window to escape a raging Bronx apartment fire that left one person dead and 10 others injured Wednesday morning.
The two-alarm blaze erupted around 7:45 a.m. Inside the six-story building on Montgomery Avenue near West 175th Street in the Morris Heights neighborhood, the FDNY said.
Deputy Chief Andrew Holzmaier described how crews confronted a rapidly expanding inferno. “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,” he told reporters.
Ring camera footage New York captured the chaos: heavy flames shooting up in front of what appears to be an apartment door, filling the hallway with thick smoke before three firefighters arrived to battle the blaze.
The man who jumped suffered burns and additional injuries and was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, where police said he was listed in critical but stable condition.
Holzmaier confirmed the desperate escape. “When units arrived, there was one civilian on the sidewalk who they said had jumped out the window to escape the flames,” he said.
One unidentified adult was unable to escape the burning structure and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to authorities and sources.
Five additional civilians sustained minor non-life-threatening injuries, the FDNY reported.
The fire also took a toll on responders. Two firefighters suffered moderate injuries and two others had minor injuries, though none were life-threatening, the department said.
A massive emergency response descended on the scene: 46 fire and EMS units with 140 total members. Crews brought the blaze under control shortly before 10 a.m.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
