NEW YORK -- A fire barrelled through a two-story home in New York early Thursday, killing six people and injuring nine others, including three firefighters and two police officers, the city’s fire department said. More than 200 first responders quickly got to the fire in the row house in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighbourhood. A cause has not been determined yet. “Upon arrival, we had fire on every floor,” Kevin Woods, the department’s chief of fire operations, said at a news conference near the severely charred wood home. “Fire blowing out every window, meeting us at the front door.” Firefighters rescued four people, getting through a rear entrance in the two-unit home to get to two people who were trapped behind window bars, he said. A staircase partially collapsed inside the home, he added. The fire was brought 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, although damage could also be seen on the exterior of the row house on the other side of the burned building. Row houses share common walls and exteriors and are usually built in blocks. Fire officials said the Sunset Park home was one in a block of 25 wood-frame homes. “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 people who were injured were expected to survive, including the three firefighters and two police officers who had minor injuries, the department said. No names have been released. 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 as the Brooklyn blaze 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. Fire marshals were still investigating the cause of Thursday’s fire in Brooklyn. A lithium-ion battery was found at the scene, but it was unknown whether it was related to the cause of the fire, the department said. The home was built in 1915, according to city property records. 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, according to fire officials. City records show that the building was sold by a family a few years ago to a company called One Golden Sunshine Corp. Complaints filed with the city’s building department in 2025 said that the home’s basement level was illegally being converted into an apartment and that construction was being done without a permit for a month. City inspectors visited several times, including in August, but were unable to gain access. McCormack contributed from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press reporters Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and Anthony Izaguirre in New York also contributed.
