It started as a lazy Sunday morning, cold and grey outside. Residents at the Twin Parks North West tower in the Bronx awoke to children and chores — and then the morning twisted in an instant into a blackening nightmare.

Wesley Patterson, 28, a resident for more than 20 years, shuffled into his bathroom to wash up at around 11am (local time) when his girlfriend knocked on the door. She said she had just looked out the window and had seen flames coming out of the apartment next door.

Thick black smoke began to flood their apartment. Within seconds, Patterson could barely see his girlfriend or her brother — and they were on the other side of the room.

“We were just trying to breathe,” he said. He rushed them to a back window and the promise of fresh air. That window was very hot to the touch, burning his hands, but he fought it open. The move backfired: Smoke began flooding into the apartment.

He slammed the window shut.

Frantic scenes like this were playing out in apartments throughout the 19-storey building, as parents and children sought escape from homes that were suddenly black and airless. Tony Johnson, 54, an army veteran, scrambled for his old gas mask but couldn’t find it.

Mamadou Wague, 47, lived on the third floor with nine other family members. “One of the kids said, ‘Oh, Daddy! Daddy! There’s a fire!’” he said. “I get up and there’s smoke in the kids’ rooms.”

He went door to door, pounding, rushing his family to the front room to escape. He was missing one child — a daughter, Nafisha, 8 years old. He rushed to her room and found her screaming in her bed.

“I just grab her and run,” he said. In the hallway, thick smoke made a blur of passing neighbours. “It was dark,” said Wague’s son, Hame, 16. “We were all coughing.” It would not be until later that Wague realised he’d suffered burns to his lips and nose — injuries he believes he received while pulling his daughter from her bed.

New York Times News Service