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NYC fire deaths nearly double in 2026 as deadly Brooklyn blaze’s victims are identified
By
Charles Lane
Published Nov 9, 2026 at 4:48 p.m. ET
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Brittany Kriegstein / Gothamist
By
Charles Lane
Published Nov 9, 2026 at 4:48 p.m. ET
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Fire deaths in New York City have nearly doubled this year, the FDNY says, as police identified three of the six people killed in a house fire on 58th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, last week.
Eighty-seven people have died in fires in the city so far in 2026, compared with 45 during the same period last year, according to the FDNY. The count includes two people who died this year from injuries sustained in fires in 2023 and 2025.
Police identified three of the people killed in Thursday’s fire as Lin Cheng Zong, 47; Weixiu Zeng, 52; and Li Sun Zhu, 21, all of whom lived in the house. The other three victims were badly burned and will require additional steps to be positively identified, police said.
Before the fire, city building inspectors had tried four times to get inside the two-story home, most recently less than three months before the blaze.
Inspectors went to the house on Sept. 9 and Oct. 22, 2025, and on Feb. 13 and Aug. 10, 2026, in response to 311 complaints made in the summer of 2025. No one let them in, the Department of Buildings said in a statement last week.
One complaint, in August 2025, reported illegal apartment conversions in the basement and on the first and second floors, city records show.
Inspectors left a notice on the door each time, then closed out the complaints under the agency’s standard procedures, the department said. It added that inspectors have no legal authority to force their way into a building.
Records kept by the city and the state attorney general list Wei Wang as the property’s owner. Wang, a doctor at Total Care Medical Center, a low-cost clinic serving the neighborhood’s Chinese community about 100 feet from the house, declined to answer Gothamist’s questions on Thursday.
“My lawyer said not to talk,” Wang said last week.
He declined to give his lawyer’s name. Messages left Monday were not returned.
Fire marshals are still investigating the cause, the FDNY said. Officials said Thursday that a lithium-ion battery was found at the scene, but that it was too early to tell whether it started the fire, which also injured nine people, including five first responders.
Fires caused by lithium-ion batteries have also increased across the city, according to FDNY data: 276 between Jan. 1 and Sept. 7 this year, up 42% from 195 during the same period in 2025.
The Sunset Park fire came less than a week after four members of a Bronx family, including 11-year-old Zion Maine, died when a lithium-ion battery caught fire.
Tagged
new york city
public safety
Charles Lane
Charles is a Day-of reporter focused on breaking news and enterprise. He’s very friendly and can be reached at [email protected], or more securely on whatsapp/signal 631-295-6715
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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