NEW YORK (AP) — A fire barreled through a multifamily row house in New York early Thursday, killing six people and injuring nine others, including some firefighters and police officers, the city's fire department said.
More than 200 first responders descended on the two-story building in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, where Kevin Woods, the department’s chief of fire operations, said they were met with “fire on every floor.”
The severely charred building had “fire blowing out every window, meeting us at the front door,” he said at a news conference. Fire marshals were still investigating what caused the blaze.
Firefighters rescued four people, using a rear entrance to reach people trapped behind window bars, Woods said. A staircase partially collapsed inside the building, he added.
First responders brought the fire under control in about three hours, and eight people who were displaced were taken to hotels. Woods said the fire spread to one adjacent row house, but damage could be seen on buildings to both its left and right.
Row houses share common walls and exteriors and are usually built in blocks. Fire officials said the building was part of a block of 25 wood-frame homes in Sunset Park, a densely populated working-class neighborhood in southwestern Brooklyn with large Asian and Hispanic populations.
“This was a devastating fire,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at the news conference. “It will take a long time for this neighborhood to mourn the neighbors they lost this morning and to recover from this immense grief.”
The nine injured people were expected to survive, including three firefighters and two police officers who had minor injuries. No names have been released.
A lithium-ion battery was found at the scene, but it was unknown whether it was related to the fire, the department said.
Last week, an e-bike battery fire killed four people in the Bronx. It is among more than 400 fires in the city that have been linked to lithium-ion batteries this year, leading to at least six deaths and more than 70 injuries, fire officials said.
Property records show that the Brooklyn row house was erected in 1915. A family sold it a few years ago to a company called One Golden Sunshine Corp., according to city records.
Complaints filed with the city’s Department of Buildings in 2025 alleged that the basement level was illegally being converted into an apartment, and construction was underway without permits. The two apartments on the first and second floors also had been illegally divided into three units, the complaints alleged.
City inspectors visited several times — most recently in August — but were unable to gain access, according to department records. Door knocks and posted notices went unanswered, and the department ultimately closed the complaints without investigating further. It is standard protocol to close a complaint after multiple unsuccessful entry attempts, according to a 2025 city audit of the department's enforcement actions.
Building inspectors do not have legal authority to force entry, though they can seek a warrant depending on the severity of the complaint.
Fatal home fires are not uncommon, though the death toll in the Brooklyn blaze was unusually high. A townhome fire in Chicago the same day killed four people, including a teenager.
The U.S. Fire Administration says at least 1,555 people have died in home fires this year. Among them were an Amish woman and her six children who were killed in a swift-moving house fire in April in rural Pennsylvania.
Last month, five people, including four children, died in a mobile home fire in Canton, Texas. And in Riverdale, Utah, a man and his four children were killed Oct. 1 in a house fire started by a power strip that overheated, officials said.
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McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press reporters Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City and Yuki Iwamura in New York contributed.
