NEW YORK, Jan 18 (Reuters) – An explosion and fire, apparently triggered by a gas leak, demolished several row house apartment units in New York City’s Bronx borough on Tuesday, killing one resident and injuring nine other people, authorities said.
Five of those injured were police officers who raced into the burning structure to help usher residents to safety, and one was a woman who was rescued from her dwelling by police, officials said.
“We saved lives today,” Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer himself, told a news conference in lauding the actions of emergency first-responders.
The cause of the blast is under investigation, but John Hodgens, FDNY chief of fire operations, said, “we had a report of somebody who did smell gas” before the explosion.
Hodgens said there was no immediate evidence of foul play.
