‘It looks like a war zone’: horror as Bronx apartment building went up in flames

Residents tell of anguish after fire broke out on Sunday morning, leaving 17 people dead and scores injured

Karen Dejesus, 54, was cooking breakfast for her young granddaughter and her son when she heard fire alarms on Sunday morning in the Bronx borough of New York.

Dejesus and her family have lived in the high rise apartment building for almost 19 years. Alarms in the building went off erroneously so often that residents on Sunday didn't register the sirens as real, she told the Guardian.