Within minutes the flat filled with smoke, he told the New York Times. He burned his hands as he tried opening the window.  

“I was yelling, ‘Please help me! Please come get us!” he said, adding that it was the “most critical situation I’ve ever been in my life.”  

“There were a lot of thoughts just popping up in my mind,” he said.

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

‘We saw all the dead bodies in the blankets’

On the 15th floor Cristal Diaz, 27, grabbed her cousins, aunt, and dog Fluffy, when she realised the block was on fire.  

“I was drinking coffee in the living room, and I started smelling smoke,” she told the New York Post.

“We started putting water on towels and the bottom of the door. Everything was crazy.

“We didn’t know what to do. We looked out the windows and saw all the dead bodies they were taking with the blankets.”