At Least 19 Dead in NYC Bronx Fire: Live Updates

Wesley Patterson was in the bathroom just before 11 a.m. on Sunday when his girlfriend knocked on the door. She had just looked out the window of their third-floor apartment and saw flames coming from another unit.

It took only moments for the apartment to become filled with smoke, said Mr. Patterson, who has lived in the building for 20 years.

“We were just trying to breathe,” Mr. Patterson, 28, said. He rushed with his girlfriend and her brother, who lives with the couple, to a back window.

He tried to open the window but the frame was so hot that he burned his hands. When he got the window open, he started screaming to firefighters helping a family in another apartment. They couldn’t get to them just yet, he said.

Mr. Patterson said he had to keep opening and shutting the window to keep smoke from pouring in as he called for help.

“I was yelling, ‘Please help me! Please come get us!’” he said.

The family considered going out the front door because it was taking so long, but when they tried to open the door, the apartment flooded with even more smoke.

“I was thinking about my son, and I was wondering if I was ever going to see him again,” Mr. Patterson said.

It was around 11:20 a.m. that Mr. Patterson said he and his family were pulled out of the window by firefighters.

“I’m glad we made it out safe, but I still can’t believe it happened,” he said.

Dana Nicole Campbell, 47, was at a nearby park, working as a groundskeeper for the city, when one of her four teenage children called. Smoke was coming into their apartment on the third floor, they told her. Ms. Campbell said she told them to put damp towels by the foot of the door, to prevent more smoke from entering the apartment, and to barricade themselves inside the apartment.

Then, she raced to the building and got there in time to see her children jump out of a third floor window. They landed on a mattress and garbage bags that people had put there as a makeshift landing pad. Later, Ms. Campbell said she was grateful her children were unharmed.

“You can be here tomorrow with broken legs,” she said. “You can’t be here tomorrow with smoke inhalation.”

The Wague family stood on the corner of Tiebout Ave. and Folin St., huddled together, some of them under a blanket, after escaping their third floor apartment.

Mamadou Wague, the father, was woken up by one of his children on Sunday morning. “I get up, and there’s smoke in the kids’ rooms,” Mr. Wague, 47, said.

As the family rushed out of the apartment, one of Mr. Wague’s children cried that their sister, Nafisha, 8, was missing. Mr. Wague sprinted to her room and found his daughter sitting on her bed screaming as the fire engulfed her mattress, he said. He grabbed her and ran, later realizing his lips and nose were burned by the flames. “I didn’t think about anything except getting her out.”

Hame Wague, Mr. Wague’s 16-year-old son, described the terror the family faced as they escaped. “It was dark in the hallway. We were all coughing,” Hame Wague said.

Jose Soto smelled something burning as he was eating breaking at around 10:45 on Sunday. Mr. Soto, who lives on the ninth floor with his girlfriend and her three children, walked toward his door and heard a beeping noise along with muffled screams. He opened the door slightly, and smoke poured into the room.

“You couldn’t believe how much smoke rushed inside,” Mr. Soto, 40, said in Spanish on Sunday. Mr. Soto, his girlfriend and her children covered their noses and mouths with wet cloths. Firefighters arrived and escorted them down the building’s staircase, which was dark and also filled with smoke, Mr. Soto said. He heard children crying and other tenants screaming for help.

“I’m traumatized now,” he said as he sat in his car, unsure of where they would sleep Sunday night. He added, “I could hear the mothers screaming. How am I going to be able to forget that?”

— Chelsia Rose Marcius, Azi Paybarah and Eduardo Medina