Firefighters swarmed a six-story apartment building at 1773 Vyse Avenue in the Crotona Park East section of the Bronx on Tuesday after reports came in of a second-floor fire with people trapped inside. FDNY units responding to the blaze found four injured people, including one in serious condition, while two firefighters suffered minor injuries as emergency medical crews worked the scene.
The fire started on the second floor of the building, according to CBS News New York, which was covering the incident as a developing story Tuesday. The outlet reported that FDNY described four injured people, including one in serious condition, while two firefighters suffered minor injuries. Details on how the fire began, and the full scope of injuries beyond those patients, had not been released as of the initial report.
A Pre-War Building With a Troubled Track Record
The affected building is a five-story residential structure built in 1918 and containing 27 individual housing units, according to StreetEasy. The available source material does not establish the number of open housing violations or Department of Buildings complaints. The building's registered corporate owners were not identified in the available source material.
The current blaze brought fire crews to the address.
What City Fire Codes Require of Landlords
Under New York City Housing Maintenance Code Section 27-2045, landlords are legally required to provide and install operable smoke detectors powered by non-removable 10-year batteries in every residential unit, per the Rent Guidelines Board. Separately, a May 1, 2025 deadline applied to installing compliant natural gas detectors wherever gas appliances are located, according to Master Plumbing & Heating. Whether the smoke and gas detection systems inside 1773 Vyse Avenue were functioning at the time of Tuesday's fire remains unknown.
NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi on Pelham Parkway is identified as the only burn center in the Bronx or southern Westchester County. It was not stated in initial reporting whether any of the people injured at 1773 Vyse Avenue required that level of specialized care.
A Fast-Growing, Aging Neighborhood
Crotona Park East was one of the South Bronx's fastest-growing enclaves between 2010 and 2020, recording a 15 percent population increase to 30,158 residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau data cited by the Bronx Times. That growth has landed atop a stock of pre-war housing stock like the Vyse Avenue building, where aging infrastructure and open violations can compound the risks tenants face. The block's NYPD patrol jurisdiction was not identified in the available source material.
Citywide, FDNY fire companies maintained an average dispatch-and-travel response time of 4 minutes and 35 seconds to structural fires in Fiscal Year 2025, according to city performance metrics. Tuesday's fire adds to ongoing attention to Bronx apartment fires. The cause of the second-floor fire at 1773 Vyse Avenue, the working condition of the building's mandatory fire warning systems, and the long-term displacement status of residents all remain unresolved as the investigation continues.
