A faulty refrigerator compressor sparked the massive blaze that tore through a Bronx building in April, killing two teens visiting the building, FDNY officials said Thursday.
The fire in the Belmont building sent panicked residents — including one who had caught fire — jumping from a second-floor fire escape as they screamed for help, witnesses said.
Nakayla Moreno, 19, and Michelle Gonzalez, 17, died after getting trapped in the fire that broke out about 1:30 p.m. April 21.
Moreno was staying with her boyfriend when a five-alarm fire ripped through the building on E. 187th St. near Belmont Ave. Gonzalez was visiting a friend who lives there, according to their families.
Eleven other people, including five firefighters, were hospitalized following the blaze, FDNY officials said.
FDNY fire marshals have now determine a faulty refrigerator compressor sparked the deadly blaze.
FDNY officials say the door of the ground-floor apartment where the fire started and the building’s front door were left open, feeding the fire oxygen and allowing it to rapidly spread to upper floors.
“I heard people screaming, ‘Fire! Fire!’” Odai Albahri, who works in a nearby store told the Daily News following the April 21 blaze. “I brought two ladders from the store and brought two people down from the fire escape. One guy was on fire, his whole body. He was crying and screaming.”
When firefighters arrived, they set up their own ladders to grab more people trapped on fire escapes.
More than 84 FDNY units — including 270 firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics — were called in to handle the job.