BROOKLYN FIRE: ONE DIES, ONE CRITICALLY INJURED
From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Injury Attorney)
An elderly woman died Friday morning, Friday, February 11, 2011, after a fire broke out on the second floor of the four-story apartment building run by the New York City Housing Authority.
A second elderly women was in critical condition after fire officials said a three-alarm blaze started at 6:03 a.m on the second floor of 1142 Lenox Road in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Three residents were taken to the hospital, two with serious injuries. One of the fire victims, a 70-year-old woman, was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The woman who died in the fire was not identified.
It took about 130 firefighters an hour to bring the fire under control.
Seven firefighters also suffered minor injuries when a floor collapsed beneath them.
Residents were rescued from fire escapes and the roof.
"We had to force entry. We had to bring people out from ladders, off the roof, from our buckets, off the fire escape. We had to remove a lot of people," said FDNY Deputy Chief Stephen Moro. "There was smoke throughout the whole building. Heavy fire on two floors with extension to the top floor."
"We couldn't make it through the front door so we just went to the fire escape. There was smoke everywhere," said one building resident.
"We realized it was a fire and I got my family members and we got out the building," said another. "When we got down to the lobby, the whole building was full of black smoke."
The Red Cross is assisting about 50 people who have been left out in the cold. At least four units of the building were left completely uninhabitable by the blaze.
It's unclear what sparked the flames, but some residents said that heating in the building had been very low and so they had begun using space heaters. The FDNY said a space heater left on overnight near a curtain was the cause of the blaze.
Comment: I've blogged before this winter about fires caused by space heaters in buildings with little heat.
