A massive fire tore through a Bronx apartment building early Friday, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the air and seven people to the hospital, officials said.
Four firefighters were among the victims being treated for minor injuries following the 6 a.m. inferno on Watson Ave. near Colgate Ave. in Soundview, FDNY officials said.
The fire started on the top floor of the three-story building and reached the cockloft, a small space between the top floor and the roof, then spread to at least one adjacent building, FDNY Chief of Fire Operations Thomas Richardson said.
“There was a large amount of fire and it was extending to all parts of the building,” Richardson told reporters at the scene. “Once it gets into the cockloft, it spreads pretty quickly, so we have to catch up with it and stay on top of it and get those hose lines in pretty quickly.”
Building tenants didn’t recall hearing any smoke alarms going off as the fire erupted.
“My dog woke me up around 5:30 a.m., I thought it was odd because she never wakes me up that early,” second floor resident Elvia Vergara, 60, said as she stood outside the torched building Friday morning. “I thought I could smell gas, which is odd because it’s summer, but I went back to bed. I woke up again at 6 a.m. to my dog barking and fire trucks outside. That’s when I saw it was serious.”
“Thank God for my dog, (she) saved my life,” Vergara said.
Retired MTA worker Walter Gilliam, who is battling lung cancer, said he wasn’t alerted to the blaze until firefighters started pounding on his door.
“I jumped up saying, ‘What’s going on?’ I wasn’t able to get anything, I had to hustle out of there,” Gilliam, 63, said. “The smoke was bad, it was black. And I was drinking in a lot of that.”
Richardson said some of the apartments on the lower floors suffered water damage. City Buildings Department investigators were also called in to perform structural stability tests.
“I just want to get up and salvage what I can,” Gilliam said. “I’m taking a big loss, a big, big loss.”
More than 200 firefighters and EMS medics worked to douse the flames and treat the injured. The fire was put under control within an hour.
Four firefighters and three residents were taken to nearby hospitals for smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion, officials said. At least one resident was left dizzy by the sweltering heat and smoke.
Fire marshals were investigating the cause of the blaze Friday and whether the building’s smoke detectors were operational, Richardson said.
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