One person died and another person was injured after a fire ripped through a Manhattan apartment building Saturday morning, officials said.
The blaze broke out on the fifth floor of the building, on W. 49th St. near Eighth Ave. in Hells Kitchen, around 11:15 a.m. where two unidentified men suffered injuries from the fire, cops and an FDNY spokesperson said.
A woman who gave her name as Mel, said she has lived on the fifth floor around a year but doesn’t know her neighbors on her floor very well.
“I was home just doing my normal routine and I just heard a lot of rumbling around and screaming and I figured maybe someone is fighting, but then I smelled something,” she said. “It didn’t smell like smoke, I don’t know how to explain it but it wasn’t alarming.”
“When I heard the sirens and someone screaming and I saw someone in my fire escape, I figured, ‘OK, I need to hurry up and get my stuff and get out of here,'” she said, “but then the firemen came and said, no, you need to stay.”
Roughly 80 firefighters responded, bringing the flames under control before noon.
Paul Le Mos, 62, a 30-year resident of the building who lives on the fourth floor, said it could have been an even worse disaster if firefighters hadn’t responded so quickly.
“You can see it’s really devastating,” Le Mos said of the fire-damaged fifth floor. “I mean, when you look at it, you go, wow. We’re fortunate it didn’t spread ’cause they got here just in time. So if it had gone longer, it could have really, it could have gotten out of control. So I’m very, very relieved that they were here as quick as they got here.”
The victims were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center where one of the men was pronounced dead and the other was in stable condition. A third person who suffered a minor injury was also brought to the same hospital.
Le Mos recognized one of the victims as EMS medics were attempting to revive him, calling him “a decent guy.”
“I had seen him coming in and out of the building for a little for a while but I didn’t know his name,” he said. “And then I saw them as they carried him down the stairs.
“We all looked out for each other in the building. So, he seemed like a decent guy. But I don’t know anything else beyond that.”
Fire marshals were still working to determine what sparked the flames. Investigators, however, believe there was no criminality and that the cause was an electrical fire in one of the fifth-floor apartments.
“I was praying, I was just praying and trying to stay calm and trying to figure out what I can gather and get out,” Mel recalled. “The hallways are all water and glass (now). My apartment is damaged to the point where I can’t sleep in there. I can’t patch a ceiling. My ceiling is open, my wall is open and my bedroom, I’m hoping I can salvage some things.”