Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, everyone. Early this morning, around 12:50 a.m., the FDNY received a call to respond to a fire here at 320 Morris Avenue at Patterson Houses in Mott Haven. The fire was reported on the 11th floor. This was an all-hands fire. Firefighters responded within four minutes and brought it under control by 2 a.m.
This was an immensely challenging, fast-evolving situation. I am heartbroken to report that an 11-year-old child lost his life. Four other New Yorkers are currently in critical condition in nearby hospitals, including two teenagers. I ask New Yorkers to join me in sending our deepest condolences to the family of the child who passed away and in praying for a full and quick recovery for those who are currently battling to survive.
I want to thank the members of the FDNY who responded, as they do every day across every borough, to this emergency with courage and without hesitation. Firefighters plunged into the fire and the smoke to rescue those who were trapped. Frankly, without their heroism, more lives would have been lost today.
As with every fire, the FDNY will conduct a thorough investigation. At this point, they have already determined the cause of this fire to be a lithium-ion battery from an e-bike.
Today is a horrific reminder of the danger that lithium-ion battery fires can pose and why it is so critically important that New Yorkers store any micromobility devices outside rather than inside their homes. We know that lithium-ion battery fires can start quickly and spread incredibly rapidly. This year alone, more than 400 fires across our city have been caused by lithium-ion batteries. These tragedies are preventable. I want to urge New Yorkers to please heed our calls and to store these devices outside.
Today's efforts have been a whole-of-government response. In addition to the FDNY, NYCHA, NYCEM, OCS and its partners were all present on the scene earlier and are still here now. NYCHA staff have conducted door-to-door outreach to neighbors in the building. At this time, the only apartment that is required to be vacated was the one where the fire began.
Currently, no other units in this building need to be vacated. Our teams will remain on-site and work closely alongside residents to provide any additional services that may be needed.
Once again, I would like to thank the men and women of the FDNY for their devotion to our city and to their fellow New Yorkers. I would now like to invite Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore to share a few words and emcee this press conference. Thank you.
Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore: Thank you for being here on this very difficult day. Once again, we gather to talk about tragedy. Earlier this morning, as the mayor said, a fire broke out at 320 Morris Avenue in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. It was an all-hands fire. Our fire and EMS units showed up in less than four minutes. Thirty-eight units responded, bringing 120 fire and EMS personnel to the scene.
The fire started in an 11th-floor apartment of a 13-story NYCHA building known as the Patterson Houses. The fire started in the kitchen and spread quickly. It claimed the life of an 11-year-old and critically injured two other teenage victims, as well as two adults. This is a tremendous tragedy. Our hearts and prayers go to the victims and to all who love them.
As the mayor said, the cause of this fire is a lithium-ion battery. An e-bike was placed in the pathway of the exit door. You can see here - we've brought the bike out. Our marshals have propped it up so you can see it. It was placed at a spot in the kitchen that made it impossible for the residents to leave safely.
We know lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, and we know how valuable they are to people's livelihoods. So, we need to remind New Yorkers how to use them safely. Where possible, lithium-ion batteries used to power micromobility devices should be charged and stored outside. They should never block exits, doors or windows. They should never be charged when you're sleeping or not in a room.
Buy certified batteries that come with nationally safety-certified testing laboratory approvals like UL. If they are leaking, damaged or smoking, do not use them. And do not buy off-market batteries; use the manufacturer-recommended devices.
NYCHA has specific curriculum on battery guidance available, and we encourage all New Yorkers to follow the best practices in keeping everyone safe. Lithium-ion battery fires are extremely dangerous because they spread fast and ferociously. The battery cells go into thermal runaway, which makes a small fire turn into a very big fire very, very quickly.
So far this year, we've seen 401 fires caused by lithium-ion batteries, 74 injuries and six deaths. That's compared to 292 fires, 51 injuries and just one death last year.
I urge you, I implore you, to take this message seriously. Charge and store these devices outside where possible. Do everything you can to stay safe.
I want to make this exceptionally clear: These lithium-ion battery fires can kill you. They can kill your family, they can kill your neighbors and they can kill our first responders. It is all our responsibility to heed the warnings that we're giving each other here.
It's important that we work together to get these messages out. We cannot continue on this path of losing lives for something like a battery that is not working properly. I'd like to turn this over to the chief of department, John Esposito, to talk about the fire in more detail.
John M. Esposito, Chief of Department, Fire Department: Good morning. Thank you, commissioner. Shortly after we received the phone call, our fire units arrived on the scene in three minutes and 38 seconds and commenced firefighting operations. They had to force the door to the fire apartment, and when that door opened, it opened into a heavy fire condition. The e-bike and the kitchen were right inside that door.
There was a victim behind the door whom they quickly removed and transported to the hospital. Our firefighters then made an incredibly brave decision to crawl past that uncontrolled burning fire to conduct searches throughout the rest of the apartment. Several of our firefighters put themselves at great personal risk to do that, to finish those searches and remove the rest of the victims from that apartment before we were able to put water on the fire and control it.
Something to remember about lithium-ion batteries: There is an incredible amount of energy stored in those batteries. And when they fail, they fail very quickly and very violently. A fire extinguisher, whether it's water or dry chem, is not sufficient to put that fire out. You cannot control a portable micromobility device lithium-ion battery fire with a fire extinguisher.
The fire and the bike were in the path of egress, so the people in the apartment were not able to get out. Our firefighters performed some incredibly brave actions, able to extinguish that fire, move everybody and give them the best chance to survive that they have.
Please, please do not store lithium-ion batteries in the paths of egress from your apartment. I'm now going to pass it over to the attorney general to make some comments.
Attorney General Letitia James: Right now, I am praying for the loss of this 11-year-old child, and I'm praying that the four other individuals will recover. I can recall being at a similar press conference in 2023 in Chinatown, where we lost four individuals as well.
We continue to show up at press conferences as a result of these e-batteries and these e-bikes. And I recognize that these are tools that individuals need economically. But we all must also recognize the danger. So, I would ask that everyone heed the advice and the guidelines that I have issued, the FDNY has issued and so many others.
Again, I want to thank the members of the FDNY, who continuously put their lives on the line each and every time. But we can avoid all of this if we engage in safety and if we properly store these new batteries and these new bikes.
Again, if this family needs any assistance for the burial of this child, my office is available. My office is available to this community, to Patterson Houses, and I thank all of you for being here. And the next people who will speak is the borough president of the Bronx, Vanessa Gibson.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for being here today. Thank you to our mayor, Zohran Mamdani, to our FDNY Commissioner, Lillian Bonsignore, our chief of department, [John] Esposito, [and our] CEO of NYCHA, who I will soon introduce, Lisa Bova-Hiatt.
Thank you to members of the FDNY, the NYPD, PSA 7, Patrol Borough Bronx South, Emergency Management, NYCHA, the Mayor's Office, elected officials who are joined here today, State Sen. José Serrano, Council Member Elsie Encarnacion, the office of Assemblywoman Amanda Septimo, Community Board One, Patricia Simpson, who is our tenant association president here, and all of you.
To the men and women of the FDNY: Thank you, thank you, thank you for your heroism, your heroic efforts. Thank you for what you do every single day. You put your lives on the line to protect New Yorkers and protect all of us here in the Bronx.
Today is a hard morning. I was awakened by a phone call to let me know about this early morning fire here at Patterson Houses. And we are truly coming together as a borough and as a city to mourn the loss of a young student, a teenager that had so much life ahead of him, and his siblings, who are currently fighting for their lives at a local hospital, and to the two adults who were also protected and recovered in this apartment fire.
We're so thankful, and we are praying for healing and strength [for] the two adults and two children who are hospitalized today.
We have seen far too many fires in the Bronx, folks. We are not new to fires that have claimed the lives of so many of our fellow Bronxites, so many children and so many adults - displaced families, forever traumatized, and families that have been changed.
To every first responder, I want to say thank you, including EMS and all of our hospital responders, for your swift response and for making sure that we're doing everything we can to preserve life.
As you have heard, the cause of this fire has been determined to be a lithium-ion battery. We have done a tremendous amount of education and outreach with the FDNY and with City Hall on the dangers of lithium-ion batteries. This is a call to action once again. We need all New Yorkers to understand: Lithium-ion batteries are dangerous. We do not want you to charge them inside your apartments. We want them to be in safe spaces.
We have done a lot, and we will continue to do more, because the information so far is enough, but it's not enough. We have to keep sounding the alarm, and I'm appealing to all of our colleagues in the media. Everything we can do to share information, to be a part of this work - school partners, clergy, all of our organizations like Guns Down Life Up and S.O.S., and many of the partners here in Mott Haven. We need everyone to understand the dangers and help us as we educate New Yorkers on the dangers of lithium-ion batteries.
All of the fires that we have seen and experienced are preventable. They are preventable. We have to do everything we can to protect lives. The fires, residential and commercial, that we have faced here in this borough have been enormous and devastating. And my heart goes out to this family here at Patterson.
Again, I am thankful for everyone being here, and over the next several days, the FDNY will be here working with Patterson and Ms. Patricia Simpson and her team. And we need to do that everywhere, especially here in public housing in the New York City Housing Authority.
So again, I want to say thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner. The commissioner and I are on the phone all the time because we are constantly doing everything we can to protect the residents of this county.
And with that, let me recognize and introduce the CEO of the New York City Housing Authority, Lisa Bova-Hiatt.
Lisa Bova-Hiatt, NYCHA CEO: Thank you so much, Borough President. First, I want to extend our deepest condolences to the family impacted by this tragic fire. Our hearts go out to you.
It's our priority to keep public housing residents safe. I want to thank the FDNY and all of the first responders who responded to the scene and worked to help those in need. We are also incredibly grateful to Mayor Mamdani and his support and partnership as the city responds to this event.
NYCHA is working to provide relocation services and support to the impacted family. We're also assessing repairs needed in the apartment and the development and will mobilize the necessary resources to address these repairs and the needs of the other Patterson Housing residents.
We'll continue to work closely with our partners to provide the affected family and neighbors with support and ensure that they have any resources that they need in the days ahead. Thank you so much. And I'll turn it back over to the mayor.
Question: Can you just reiterate what the policy is at NYCHA for storing e-bikes in public housing?
Bova-Hiatt: Sure. Our policy was implemented in 2024 after a lot of back and forth, a lot of resident engagement, a lot of stakeholder engagement. Originally, we had suggested that we would ban e-bikes from public housing residents, but we understood, through discussions with our residents and with other stakeholders, that you can charge one e-bike away from a means of egress, plugged into a wall, with an adult over the age of 18 present and awake while the battery is charging.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Bova-Hiatt: Well, it's a lease violation, but obviously NYCHA's main goal as a public housing authority is to keep people housed. We need individuals to listen and follow the policy, and that's where we are.
Question: I'm wondering If the city or NYCHA has explored - a lot of these new developments, there are rooms for bikes. There are cinderblock rooms that, if there was a fire, perhaps it would be contained to that place. Have you looked into that for some of - these NYCHA buildings that are obviously built in that same vein. Have you looked at creating some of the spaces in public housing that's really newer developed?
Mayor Mamdani: We are going to explore every single avenue to keep NYCHA residents safe, and to keep New Yorkers safe. And when it comes to lithium-ion battery fires, we know that the consequences can be devastating. So, from your suggestion to others that are being put in front of us, all of them are going to be considered
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: I think it is our responsibility to continually evaluate every option we have. You've heard from the borough president; this is an issue that we have seen far too often. And you've heard it from the attorney general as well. She can cite by memory the last time that we were speaking about this, which was one that also took the lives of New Yorkers. So we're going to evaluate every option we have in front of us.
I will pass it over to our fire commissioner to answer your first question.
Commissioner Bonsignore: So, at this point, we don't have exact ages released, but we can tell you they're older teenagers, older than the 11-year-old, and everybody right now, all four of them, are in critical condition. So, you know, we hope for their recovery. It's not going to be an easy recovery, but certainly I can say that when this happened, EMS arrived on the scene within a minute of being deemed a fire. And the fire trucks got here in less than four minutes.
Our firefighters went in and were able to bring these people out in very serious condition, turn them over to EMS, who was waiting on the scene who immediately started care. And I think, you know, the fact that there are still four with us right now is a testament to the hard work of EMS, our EMTs, paramedics and our firefighters who got them out in a timely way.
We only hope that they recover. And it's going to be a long road. And certainly, they're going to have to deal with the loss of their son or their child. It's very, very tragic.
