{"id":220500,"date":"2026-05-05T11:04:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/220500\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:04:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:04:56","slug":"mother-and-daughter-among-three-killed-in-upper-manhattan-apartment-building-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/220500\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother and daughter among three killed in upper Manhattan apartment building fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

A mother and daughter who became trapped in a smoke-filled hallway were among three people killed and five critically hurt by a fast-moving fire<\/a> in an upper Manhattan apartment building early Monday, officials and neighbors said.<\/p>\n

The blaze broke out on the second floor of the six-story building on Dyckman St. near Broadway in Inwood about 12:30 a.m. and quickly grew to three alarms as it spread up the building\u2019s lone staircase to eight apartments. FDNY officials said. Firefighters were on scene in three minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis fire was a very serious fire,\u201d said FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said. \u201cIt unfortunately resulted in many patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

A brother of the building\u2019s super told the Daily News that surveillance footage in the building showed a fifth-floor resident and her adult daughter becoming disoriented while trying to fleeing down the building\u2019s stairwell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cameras show them going up and down, not sure how to get out,\u201d said 73-year-old Pablo Rodriguez. \u201cIf they\u2019d gone up to the roof and crossed over, they would have been safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodriguez said the older woman\u2019s husband darted out the fire escape and survived. He was later spotted at the scene, desperately searching for his wife and daughter, sources said.<\/p>\n

The other fatal fire victim was a man living in a fourth-floor apartment, Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n

Alexis Rodriguez, 44, said his wife and two sons, ages 4 and 7, are at Harlem Hospital, while his 18-year-old daughter is at Jacobi Medical Center. All four are intubated in critical condition. His family lives on the sixth floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going back and forth between the two hospitals. all of my family are intubated,\u201d said Rodriguez. \u201cI can\u2019t talk to them. They are critical and they\u2019re just trying to maintain them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy older daughter is the one that is more burned,\u201d he added. \u201cMy wife also, her hands are burned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodriguez said he was working at Rockefeller Center when the fire broke out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened,\u201d he said. \u201cI wish I was there \u2026 I\u2019m praying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medics treated 14 people, including a firefighter with minor injuries. Three residents died at the scene, while five more were hospitalized with critical injuries, FDNY officials said. Four more residents were taken to local hospitals with moderate or minor injuries.<\/p>\n

The owners of the apartment building are being sued by the city for neglecting fire hazard<\/a>s at a neighboring property at 209 Dyckman, court documents show. The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development has filed a legal petition accusing Jan Jan Realty Corp., which buildings records list as also the owner of the fire-ravaged building, of neglecting hundreds of unsafe code violations at the property next door.<\/p>\n

Rita Vega, 35, who lives on the second floor, was awakened by the smoke detectors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started to smell the smoke as we were coming down, so we were just coughing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a lot of smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fire was brought under control at 3 a.m. Its cause has not yet been determined.<\/p>\n

About 100 residents were displaced by the fire. Tenants are not expected to move back into their apartment until Wednesday, Council Member Carmen De La Rosa said.<\/p>\n

Lilian De Los Santos, 63, who has lived on the second floor for two years, said the fire forced her to go out the back of the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne lady, when she went out, she broke a leg when she came down the fire escape,\u201d De Los Santos said in Spanish. \u201cI wanted to help the lady who broke the leg but I couldn\u2019t help. I said, \u2018\u2019I\u2019m sorry.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael, 30, who lives on the fifth floor, could see smoke coming in under his apartment door.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I tried leaving the building on the main stairs, the fire was all in the hallway,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was too hot. I opened the door but the fire tried to get in the apartment. I closed the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

He used the fire escape instead.<\/p>\n

Fire officials said that, once again, open doors near a central staircase had allowed the flames to intensify and shoot upstairs to other apartments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still working with the fire department and with the Department of Buildings to determine what the cause of the fire was and also whether there was any negligence on the part of the landlord that contributed to the fire,\u201d said Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Diana Levy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is under the housing maintenance code a requirement that all doors be self closing. And so if tenants are propping them open, we do need to do more to educate them on why not to do that. But we also need to make sure that landlords are complying with making sure all doors are self closing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani said firefighters have enough obstacles to deal with without the added challenges of fire-feeding open doors and vehicles that block fire hydrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been a number of times where I\u2019ve responded to fires, I\u2019ve arrived on the scene to meet the incredible first responders that our city has, and have been shown the fact that there was a car parked in front of a fire hydrant that then delayed the response to a five-alarm fire,\u201d Mamdani said at an unrelated news conference in the Bronx.<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who represents the area, called the fire \u201ca horrible tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very old building,\u201d he said at the scene. \u201cIt\u2019s a landmark building. It\u2019s one of the longest and oldest buildings in the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Josephine Stratman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother and daughter who became trapped in a smoke-filled hallway were among three people killed and five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[86822,22794,68352,75,84,83,9,24,63,86821,86558],"class_list":["post-220500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-alexis-rodriguez","tag-fdny-commissioner","tag-fire-escape","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-pablo-rodriguez","tag-the-fire-escape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}