Courtney Maine had long ago made plans for Halloween.
Mr. Maine, a 37-year-old man living with his family in the Bronx, had hatched the plot with his friend and neighbor, Joshua Perez. They would find costumes — Pumpkin kings? Ghost masks? The details didn’t matter — and then they would hide, jumping out when the moment was right to give the children on their block a good old-fashioned scare.
But on Saturday, as evening descended and children in superhero costumes and colorful clown getups loosed themselves across the Bronx and the four other boroughs to trick-or-treat, Mr. Maine was not at home or with Mr. Perez.
Instead, he was lying in a hospital bed in critical condition, while four members of his family were dead, fatally injured after an electric-bike battery caught fire inside their apartment and trapped them in the blaze, according to Mr. Perez and the Fire Department.
“Everything’s different now,” Mr. Perez said on Saturday, gazing at the door where Mr. Maine lived with his longtime girlfriend, Syida Adam, and three children, now padlocked and blackened with soot.
An 11-year-old boy, Zion Maine, died in the fire on Wednesday, after firefighters crawled through heavy flames to reach the stranded family, Mr. Perez and the authorities said. On Saturday, the Fire Department confirmed that three other members of the household also perished from their injuries, making Mr. Maine the sole survivor.
The fire erupted just after midnight on Wednesday when the bike’s battery erupted into flames, city officials said at a news conference this week. It had been propped up in the doorway of the apartment, blocking in Mr. Maine and his family once the fire began.
Firefighters arrived about three minutes after the emergency was reported, forcing their way through the apartment door and past the lapping flames, officials said. They extinguished the fire in a little over an hour, and emergency medical workers brought the family members to local hospitals.
The blaze, in the Patterson houses at 320 Morris Ave., a public housing complex, has renewed concern over the safety of e-bikes, as lithium-ion battery fires in the city have soared. The fire was the 401st e-bike battery fire of the year, the city’s fire commissioner, Lillian Bonsignore, said on Wednesday.
The e-bike in Mr. Maine’s apartment this week was a new addition to the home — a recent gift — Mr. Perez, the neighbor, said, adding that he wished he had warned the family about the dangers.
“Every person I see with an e-bike, I say, ‘Don’t go inside your house with that,’” Mr. Perez said. “It’s like you’re risking it every day.”
Mr. Perez said he met Mr. Maine and his family five years ago when he moved into the building. They had been quick to welcome him, and soon they were a steady presence in his life, and in those of many of his neighbors.
Mr. Maine worked at a carwash, Mr. Perez said, and Ms. Adam would split her time there and at a local shop, where she helped the owner. Zion was an avid basketball player, Mr. Perez said, and the other two children spoke often about video games. The oldest child was smart as a whip, he said.
The last time Mr. Perez and Mr. Maine had spoken, the men had shared their dreams of leaving New York City for greener pastures. The city, once exhilarating, had grown repetitive, Mr. Maine told Mr. Perez. He hoped to take his loved ones south.
“It was a happy conversation,” Mr. Perez said.
Jesse Ortiz, 50, who lives on the twelfth floor of the building, remembered the family was a friendly bunch. She often passed the pair leaning up against the railing outside the building, chatting to themselves and greeting their neighbors. “They was always out here, ‘Good morning, how you doing, hello queen,’” Ms. Ortiz said. “It was a really good family.”
On the night of the fire, Ms. Ortiz said she and her daughter were instructed to stay in their apartment while firefighters attended to the blaze. From their window, though, her daughter watched in horror as medical workers ferried Mr. Maine and his family outside.
Another neighbor, Kristal Ayala, 33, who lived a few doors down from the family, said that by the time her sister had roused her, smoke was already pouring into their apartment from the gap under the front door.
“I wish we could have helped honestly,” she said this week. “I wish we would have noticed it a little earlier. We could have found a way to get inside.”
On Saturday outside 320 Morris Ave., the events of the week were still fresh in residents’ minds as Halloween festivities went off — the shock of tragedy mingling, as it does, with the ceaseless churn of city life.
A woman wiped tears from her face while someone in a Ghostface costume laughed several feet away. A man whispered about the fire to someone on the phone, plastic spiders and skeleton cutouts all around him.
Some neighbors said they planned to give out Halloween candy that evening, despite the grief still hanging heavily around the building. But Mr. Perez never did get the chance to dress up with his friend. His mind, he said, was with Mr. Maine.
“Who wants to be alive when everybody else is gone?” Mr. Perez said. “It’s gonna be hard, but I know I’m going to be there for him as much as I can.”
Trailing off, he added: “He’s gonna need it. He’s gonna need it.”
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