NEW YORK — One person died and more than a dozen others, including a firefighter, were hospitalized after a massive fire, sparked by a gas explosion, tore through the top of a Bronx high-rise early Saturday, officials said.

The four-alarm blaze broke out on the top floors of the 17-story Bivona Street building near Reeds Mill Lane in the Baychester neighborhood of the Bronx just before 12:15 a.m.

As heavy flames blew out windows, trapped residents were seen shouting for help as their neighbors scrambled downstairs, escaping the heavy smoke.

“It was really bad. The flames were just going up,” Delores Singleton, 49, told the Daily News Saturday. “You could see people hanging out of windows begging for their lives, (screaming,) ‘Help me! Help me!'”

Singleton, a nurse, was just about to make a late-night snack just after midnight when she “heard a big boom,” she remembered.

“It shook the side of the living room,” she said as she stood outside her building in the subfreezing temperatures Saturday morning. “I just ran out of the house. I had no warm clothes. My neighbors gave me what I have on right now.”

In her mad dash to escape, she left behind her two parakeets — a gift from a patient. She was worried about their welfare on Saturday.

“I hope they can get them back to me,” she said.

The New York City Fire Department was investigating a smell of gas on the 15th and 16th floors of the building, when “an explosion occurred,” FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito said early Saturday.

“We had severe structural damage in six apartments on each floor. We eventually had fire in five apartments on the 16th floor and five apartments on the 17th floor,” Esposito said. “It was a very, very dangerous operation for our firefighters, who performed incredibly on those upper floors, searching and protecting civilian life.”

The building is part of the Boston Secor Houses. The complex was once run by NYCHA, but was recently taken over by a private company, which now runs the buildings, officials said.

While an exact cause for the blast was not immediately disclosed, neighbors suspected that an ongoing renovation project at the complex may have led to the explosion and fire.

Last week an electrical fire broke out in another building in the development, neighbors said.

Beacon Communities, the current managers of Boston Secor called the fatal fire a “tragic incident.”

“Our thoughts are with everyone at the property, including residents and emergency response personnel, who have been affected,” the company said in a statement. “We are actively gathering the necessary information to determine the cause of this incident. We are continuing to coordinate with our partners across the city, including emergency responders, to place all remaining residents in hotel rooms as quickly as possible.”

Multiple residents recalled smelling gas before the explosion and raging inferno began.

“They (FDNY) checked our neighbor’s oven because the neighbor’s oven smelled like heavy gas. It smelled like it had a leak coming through. It smelled so potent,” Cearia Marshall, 26, who lives on the 15th floor, recalled. “(We) called the Fire Department. They came, turned it off. Left. Building blew up.”

“We started running down the stairs,” she said.

Photos and video taken at the scene showed heavy flames shooting out of bay windows on the upper floors.

One tenant died at the the scene as firefighters doused the flames. A second tenant was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center with critical injuries.

The deceased tenant, who lived on the 17th floor, had not been immediately identified Saturday, officials said.

“Older gentleman, father, husband, (had) about three kids,” tenant Kimberly Collins said, describing her deceased neighbor. “This is a horrible tragedy. You wouldn’t want to wish this on anybody at all. We can’t change back the hand of time, but somebody needs to be held accountable for this.”

FedEx worker Jason Bueno, 27, was in his 12th-floor apartment when he heard the explosion above him.

“I heard a boom. I was up and it sounded loud so I went inside and got my mom and everybody and we started going down the stairs,” Bueno said. “I thought the building was coming down.”

Antionne Richardson had just returned home from his job as a security guard when he heard a big commotion outside in his 14th-floor hallway.

“At first, I didn’t pay that any mind. I was minding my business,” he said. “Then I heard a boom and it shook the building.”

Richardson, 43, opened his apartment door and saw “everybody in the hallway.”

“They said, ‘Fire! You gotta leave!’ so I got my whole family up and got them ready,” he recalled.

As his family prepared to move, Richardson saw the firefighters coming up and showed them where the water pipe for the floor was.

“They said the smoke wasn’t that bad and we didn’t have to evacuate. But then about 10 minutes later they were, like, ‘Everybody evacuate the building!’ Everybody was taking the stairs. The people with wheelchairs, the FDNY was carrying them down.”

A dozen tenants and a firefighter were taken to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, the FDNY said. Another injured tenant refused medical attention.

Early radio reports stated the top of the building had been “blown off” and that people were trapped in their burning apartments.

More than 230 firefighters and EMS personnel raced to the scene to put out the massive conflagration and care for the injured. The fire was brought under control just before 5 a.m.

Multiple city agencies and the Red Cross were on the scene to care for civilians left outside in the frigid 10-degree weather, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.

“I am with families at a nearby reception center, and we are working with the Red Cross to support displaced residents,” Mamdani posted on X. “The fire is under control, but searches, inspections and utility restoration are ongoing.”

At an unrelated press conference Saturday morning, Mamdani said that all of the building’s 148 units had been evacuated.

“I visited residents there this morning,” Mamdani said. “I hugged the woman in whose apartment that fire began. I could smell the fire still on her clothes. She was crying as she was mourning everything that she had lost. As you can imagine, this has been a deeply frightening and devastating morning. They are not alone. Our city will stand by them and do everything in our power to help them get back on their feet.”

By 1:30 p.m., the Red Cross had cared for 101 households displaced from the fire. A total of 305 people, including 89 children, were asking for emergency assistance at a reception area on Reeds Mill Lane.

On Saturday afternoon, a Beacon Communities spokeswoman said, “Our priority right now is ensuring the households that are still impacted have a warm place to stay tonight and as long as necessary until they can return to their homes.”

“The fire itself impacted 133 households in one building,” she said. “However, residents in the other buildings were impacted for a period of time today as emergency personnel assessed the overall safety of the entire campus.

“At this time, all but the original 133 households that were directly impacted by the incident have been allowed to return to their homes, and partners are working now on placing those 133 households in hotels or ensuring they have alternate places to stay.”

One displaced resident, who only identified himself as Horace, said he hadn’t been allowed back in his apartment all day. He was not sure how he was going to survive Sunday’s snowstorm under those conditions.

“I can’t get into my house to get my clothes…They ain’t telling nobody nothing. They just not letting people into the building,” the 60-year-old tenant said. “We got a f—ing snowstorm about to go off in the city. You’re just gonna displace people at this time when there’s supposed to be inches of snow?”

FDNY fire marshals are trying to determine what initially sparked the gas explosion and fire, Esposito said. City officials believe that a boiler in the building exploded, but an official cause has not been determined.

“(We will be looking) into every single detail about this morning’s fire,” Mamdani said.

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