A 5-year-old girl and her 6-year-old brother died early Friday when a fire engulfed the second floor of their home on Staten Island, authorities said.
The children, whose names were not immediately released, were among six siblings in the house when the fire broke out around 10 a.m., officials said. Two other siblings, a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old boy, were in critical condition, and the remaining two were in stable condition with injuries not considered life-threatening, officials said Friday afternoon. All six were 14 or younger, officials said.
The children’s mother, who was not home when the fire started, was being treated for shock, officials said.
“A terrible tragedy happened here this morning,” Laura Kavanaugh, the New York Fire Chief, said at a news conference near the scene of the fire, on Van Duzer Street near the Wagner College campus.
Ms. Kavanaugh, who was joined at the press conference by, among others, New York City’s first deputy mayor Sheena Wright, said the fire started at the back of the second floor and the cause is being investigated but does not appear to be to be. due to heating problems.
In response to a reporter’s question, Ms Kavanaugh said there was no indication an electric bicycle played a role in the fire. The lithium-ion batteries used in such bicycles have been linked to about 200 fires and six deaths in the city this year, according to the fire department.
Firefighters responding to the Staten Island fire around 10:20 a.m. Friday encountered flames so intense that “the fire came down the stairs” from the second floor, said John J. Hodgens, the chief of the fire department.
Such an event, he added, was “very rare”.
The six children were found unconscious on the second floor, Chief Hodgens said. One was pronounced dead at the scene; a second died after being taken to a hospital.
Later on Friday, as darkness fell and the air grew icy, firefighters and detectives were seen going in and out of the charred house, flashlights in hand. Neighbors said in interviews that they did not know the family well.
It was at least the second fire in New York City in recent months to kill several children. In October two boys, 10 and 12; a 10 month old girl; and a man, 22, died after a fire broke out at a home in the Bronx.
While there was no evidence that a stove or other means of heating the home had started the fire, Ms. Kavanaugh and other officials used the press conference to remind New Yorkers to safely heat their homes and to contact 311 if their heating was insufficient. Local temperatures were expected to drop well below freezing until Saturday.
A faulty space heater was identified as the cause of a January fire at an apartment tower in the Bronx that killed 17 people, including nine children, after an open apartment door caused thick, black smoke to quickly fill the high-rise building .
Eduardo Salazar Uribe contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.