Video: 'Happy Land Social Club fire in Bronx WABC 3/25/90'

(Sunday, March 25, 1990, 3:30 a.m. EST; during the Happy Land fire) — 87 people, most of them Honduran and Dominican immigrants, were killed early this morning when a deliberately set fire raced through an illegal overcrowded social club, the Happy Land, in the Bronx borough of New York City.

The arsonist, Cuban refugee Julio Gonzalez — whose former girlfriend worked at the club and survived the fire — was convicted on multiple counts of arson and murder. He died in prison in September 2016.

The fire was the deadliest in New York City since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which coincidentally occurred on the same day in 1911, and the deadliest in the United States since the Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in Puerto Rico in 1986.