Six Killed, Nine Hurt in Brooklyn Sunset Park House Fire

Six adults were killed and nine other people were injured when a fast-moving fire tore through a two-storey home in Brooklyn early on Thursday, New York fire officials said.

The blaze broke out in the Sunset Park neighbourhood shortly before 2 a.m., at a row house on 58th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Within minutes it had engulfed the building, and the Fire Department of New York raised it to a three-alarm fire.

Four residents were pronounced dead at the scene, and two others died after being taken to local hospitals, according to the New York Police Department and fire officials. All six of the people killed were adults, USA Today reported. Their names had not been released by Thursday morning.

Nine other people were hurt, including four civilians, three firefighters and two police officers. Officials said all of the injured were expected to survive, with the first responders suffering minor, non-life-threatening injuries.

Flames spread to every floor

Fire crews arrived within minutes of the first call, but the fire had already taken hold. FDNY Chief of Operations Kevin Woods told reporters that the flames had spread to every floor of the building, including the cellar, blowing out every window and bursting out of the front door.

The fire was raised to two alarms at 1:46 a.m. and to three alarms at 2:10 a.m., drawing more than 200 first responders to the scene, the Associated Press reported. Firefighters brought the blaze under control just before 4:30 a.m., roughly three hours after it began.

The home, built in 1915 according to city property records, was badly damaged. Neighbours watched from the street as crews worked through the night, with smoke still rising from the roof long after the flames were out.

Four people pulled from the building

Firefighters rescued four people from inside the house, getting through a rear entrance to reach two people who were trapped behind window bars, officials said. Without that rapid response, those two people would have died, an NYPD official said at the scene.

The rescue was one of the few bright moments in a grim morning. Emergency crews worked in shifts through the night, and hazmat teams were called in after lithium-ion batteries were found inside the home.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke to reporters at a morning news conference, where he confirmed the death toll and said the city would support the families affected. He said recovery from “immense grief” would take time.

Cause still under investigation

Fire marshals were still investigating the cause of the blaze on Thursday, and officials stressed that no determination had been made. A lithium-ion battery was found at the scene, but the Fire Department said it was unknown whether it was related to the cause of the fire.

Lithium-ion batteries, which power e-bikes and scooters, have been blamed for a series of deadly fires across New York City in recent years, and fire officials have repeatedly warned residents about the risks of damaged or improperly charged batteries. Investigators have not said whether a battery played any role in this fire.

The Fire Department said its Bureau of Fire Investigation remained at the scene on Thursday, working to establish where and how the fire started.

A neighbourhood in mourning

Sunset Park, a densely populated neighbourhood with large Latino and Asian communities, was left reeling by the scale of the loss. Six deaths in a single house fire is among the deadliest residential fires the city has seen in recent years, and the toll was felt well beyond the block where it happened.

The tragedy came on the same week as other deadly incidents across the country, including a Des Moines post office shooting that left two people dead and a Tampa Citibank shooting in which two people were killed. But the Brooklyn fire stood apart in its scale: six lives lost in a single home, in the space of a few hours, before most of the city was awake.

Officials said further updates would follow as the investigation continues and as the victims are formally identified. For now, the questions that matter most — how the fire started, and whether anything could have stopped it — remain unanswered.