50-year-old woman dies in fatal fire in Bronx apartment building

A 50-year-old woman has died after a fire tore through her Bronx apartment building, authorities said Sunday.

Firefighters received the call about the blaze around 7:44 a.m., but were initially directed to the wrong address, causing a slight delay, FDNY Deputy Chief Andrew Holzmaier told a reporter at the scene. The firefighters arrived at the correct address about 6 minutes after the initial call, discovering the entire first floor of a six-story building near Grand Ave. and W. 183rd St. in University Heights on fire, Holzmaier said.

The arriving smoke eaters “found heavy volume of fire out of the front first-floor windows as well as into the hallway” and “made an aggressive interior attack,” Holzmaier said.

Ultimately, the FDNY dispatched 21 units of 79 Fire and EMS personnel to the scene, with the fire brought under control by 9:09 a.m., FDNY said.

The 50-year-old woman who perished, and whose identity was not immediately released, was found unconscious and unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene, an NYPD spokesperson said.

Medics rushed a 37-year-old woman in critical but stable condition to Jacobi Medical Center, where she is being treated for burns, according to police. Firefighters also rescued a third victim with minor injuries who refused medical treatment.

“I just got here, my daughter is in the hospital,” said Nelson Myales, who was standing outside the building. “She jumped out of her apartment window on the first floor. I don’t even know her condition,” Myales said. “Her mother’s right here, and she’s crying.”

Myales said he was not sure but was afraid that the woman who had died may have been his daughter’s girlfriend, who she lived with. “Nobody has seen her. We are looking for her,” he said.

“I was sleeping. My daughters woke me up, saying that the building was on fire,” said Lily Lopez, who has lived on the fourth floor of the building for 25 years. “So as soon as I noticed that, I got dressed and I took both my daughters, and we ran out of through the fire escape.”

“It’s very sad, super sad, like it’s crazy,” said Lopez, who was friendly with the woman who perished. Lopez and other residents said the woman lived on the first floor. “I can’t believe this happened to my neighbor, to my friend, to my building. It’s really sad that my daughter has to see this, that I had to leave everything behind.”

Five residents have been displaced from their homes during the freezing Code Blue weather, an NYPD official said. They are being assisted by the Red Cross.

“Somebody passed away, one of our neighbors that lives on the first floor,” said Issac Lopez, 44, who lives in the building next door to the one that caught fire and is not related to Lily.

Lopez said he saw the victim’s partner telling firefighters the victim was still inside.

“She kept saying ‘she’s still inside, she’s still inside. I gotta go back in’,” Lopez said. “They tried to calm her down.”

“You could tell she had burns on the shoulders,” he said of the victim’s partner. The victim’s son was also at the scene, according to Lopez.

“The son was very heartbroken. He was trying to go back inside,” Lopez said.

“He was hopeful that hopefully she would be able to come out,” he sighed. “They came out with a black body bag.”

Lopez described the victim as a “hardworking woman” and an entrepreneur who would deliver homemade meals around the neighborhood on her electric bike.

“It was a pretty scary thing this morning. Just waking up to a bunch of chaos and everybody’s screaming and yelling,” said Angelina Acevedo, 19, who lives in the building next door to the one that caught fire. “There was people out here no shoes, no coats, nothing.”

Fire marshals are investigating the cause of the fire.