Two massive fires have devastated the United States in the first nine days of 2022, with one Townhouse fire in Philadelphia killed 12 people on January 5 and one Fire in apartment in New York killed 17 Sunday.
“This is going to be one of the worst fires we have witnessed in modern times,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on Sunday fire, which also left at least 63 people injured.
That Philadelphia townhouse fire, as authorities say, may have started by a small child playing with a lighter near a Christmas tree, was the deadliest that has hit the city in more than a century.
Here’s a look at some of the deadliest home fires in the last 20 years in the United States.
Chicago apartment fire on August 26, 2018
Ten minors, including six children under the age of 12, were killed during an overnight stay when a fire broke out on the porch of an apartment in Chicago on August 26, 2018.
There were no adults present when the fire broke out and there were no functioning smoke detectors in the home.
The landlord of the building was accused just three years earlier of not having a smoke detector in the unit where the fire started, according to Chicago Tribune.
Fire in Bronx apartment on December 28, 2017
A 3-year-old who played with stove burners started this fire on the first floor of a five-story Bronx apartment building, leaving 13 people dead on December 28, 2017.
Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called it “historic in its magnitude” as it was the worst fire in New York City in a quarter of a century.
Emmanuel Mensah, a private in the National Guard, rescued several people from the burning building before succumbing to smoke inhalation.
Memphis house fire on September 12, 2016
ONE fire started in the living room of a small home in Memphis, Tennessee, shortly after midnight on September 12, 2016, leaving four adults and six children dead.
A neighbor, Shondra Hampton, said firefighters pulled lifeless bodies out of the home, which had metal rods over most of the windows.
“I’ve never seen firefighters cry, but they cried like babies when they brought the kids out,” Hampton said. Tennessean.
It was the deadliest fire in Memphis since the 1920s.
Pennsylvania House Fire, April 3, 2008
A two-story house fire in the small town of Brockway, about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, left 10 family members dead on April 3, 2008.
The fire started around 2:30 a.m. and only two family members escaped, one by jumping out of a second-floor window.
Eight of the victims were children, according to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Bronx house fire on March 8, 2007
A space heater on an overloaded power strip triggered a fire in the basement of a Bronx three-story house on March 8, 2007.
Ten people, including eight children, died in the fire. They were all part of a large family of 22 people from the West African nation of Mali who lived in the house.
Kentucky House Fire February 6, 2007
Ten family members, including six children, died when a one-story wooden frame home went up in flames early in the morning of February 6, 2007.
Dwight Mason, a neighbor, said he was briefly able to enter the house through a window but had to return.
“I knew there were kids in the house and you want to do something,” he told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I kept hearing the kids shouting and screaming and stuff like that.”
Fire in the Louisiana apartment on March 10, 2005
A family moved into an apartment in southern Louisiana on March 10, 2005, and their new home caught fire just hours later, leaving 11 of them dead.
Candles that the family used got a mattress on fire, which got stuck in a doorway as they tried to pull it outside.
The deceased ranged in age from 6 months to 42 years. Six of the family members fled.
Delaware house fire on January 3, 2001
Three generations of women raised their families in a home in Delaware that was filled with smoke during a fat fire on January 3, 2001.
Eleven members of the family died of smoke inhalation in the home, which had two smoke detectors but no batteries. Seven of the victims were children.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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