Investigators have determined careless cooking to be the cause of two separate and deadly fires that took lives in Brooklyn and the Bronx a day ago, the FDNY said Thursday.
Both fires were deemed accidental.
In the Brooklyn case, emergency crews responded to a 911 call of a residential fire in a Ralph Avenue apartment shortly before 4 a.m. Wednesday. A 27-year-old man was found dead, with burns to his body, once firefighters extinguished the flames.
His identity has not been released.
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That afternoon, around lunchtime, firefighters responded to another blaze, this one at a ninth-floor apartment at a residential building on Webster Avenue in the Bronx's Morrisania neighborhood. A 66-year-old man was taken to the hospital with severe injuries and later pronounced dead, again another cooking-related accident.
His name hasn't been released either. An operational smoke alarm was present in the Bronx case, while a smoke alarm was also detected in the Brooklyn case.
The latter one wasn't working, though, fire officials said. The victim in that case has not been publicly identified either.
The FDNY is urging New Yorkers to be more careful when it comes to cooking, sharing tips like keeping the stove area clear of towels, papers and potholders and wearing short or tight-fitting sleeves when cooking. See more safety tips here.
