FDNY Commissioner Was in Puerto Rico for the Somos Conference as the Sunset Park Fire Killed Six, the Post Reports

The city's fire commissioner was not in the city when its deadliest fire of the year killed six people in Sunset Park. Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore was at the annual Somos political conference in Puerto Rico on Thursday — a beachside gathering of New York state's political class in San Juan — just hours after the blaze tore through a two-story home on the 600 block of 58th Street in Brooklyn, the New York Post reported. Four people were pronounced dead at the scene and another two died on the way to the hospital, according to the Post's account of the fire department's record.

Confronted by reporters in Puerto Rico, Bonsignore played down her absence. "I have my first deputy commissioner who is currently taking care of business down there," she said, according to the Post, adding that there was no need for her to be back in the five boroughs following the tragedy. She then offered fire-safety advice from the conference: "We need to get the message out there that fire safety and education is an important thing to learn for every family, every neighbor, every person." The Post reported that Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration signed off on sending a number of his deputies and commissioners to Somos, the premier gathering attended by New York state's political class each year.

The fire she was answering for remains under investigation. The blaze barreled through the two-story Sunset Park home early Thursday, killing six people and injuring nine others, including three firefighters and two police officers, the city's fire department said, in the Associated Press account. More than 200 first responders got to the fire. A cause has not been determined yet, fire marshals were investigating, and a lithium-ion battery was found at the scene — though it was unknown whether it was related to the cause of the fire, the department said. It is among more than 400 fires in the city that have been linked to lithium-ion batteries this year, leading to at least six deaths and more than 70 injuries, according to fire officials.

This story reports the commissioner's whereabouts and her own quoted response exactly as the Post reported them; it asserts nothing about the fire's cause, which officials have not determined, and no victim's name, none having been released by police or fire officials in the records read for this story. Any official statement from the commissioner's office or the mayor's office on the trip would be reported as a follow-up when officials issue one.