Bronx apartment fire kills toddler, critically injures 6-year-old twins

A 1-year-old boy died and two 6-year-old children were critically injured after fire tore through a Fordham apartment building, a fast-moving blaze that sent families fleeing from 2609 Bainbridge Ave. and left investigators with urgent questions about what failed inside the building.

The fire broke out on the second floor of the six-story building near East 193rd and East 194th streets at about 3:40 p.m. on Monday, May 11, 2026. Police and fire officials said the children were rescued from the apartment where the fire started and taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where the toddler was later pronounced dead. The two 6-year-olds, believed to be a boy and a girl and possibly twins, remained in critical condition.

FDNY and EMS personnel swarmed the building, with 79 firefighters and emergency responders rushing to the scene. Officials said 21 units responded, and crews brought the blaze under control about an hour later. At least seven other people were hurt, including three firefighters who suffered minor injuries and were taken to area hospitals.

The death of a child and the critical injuries to two others turn a neighborhood apartment fire into more than an isolated tragedy. In a borough where many families live in older multifamily buildings, every delay in detection, escape, or rescue can become fatal within minutes. The fire’s cause was still under investigation, and officials had not said what may have sparked it or whether any building-safety features helped limit the spread.

The scene on Bainbridge Avenue also raises the broader public-health question that so often follows deadly residential fires in low-income urban housing: whether the building was adequately protected, maintained, and inspected before families were placed at risk. As investigators work to determine what happened on the second floor, the loss in Fordham underscores how quickly a housing emergency can become a child-safety catastrophe, with consequences that spread beyond one apartment and into an entire community.