{"id":202959,"date":"2026-04-20T03:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/202959\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T03:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:20:10","slug":"union-city-n-j-fire-that-killed-74-year-old-woman-remains-under-investigation-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/202959\/","title":{"rendered":"Union City, N.J., fire that killed 74-year-old woman remains under investigation, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Officials are continuing to investigate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/newyork\/news\/union-city-new-jersey-fire\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a deadly fire in Union City, New Jersey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It started Saturday afternoon in a vacant structure on Bergen Turnpike near 38th Street and quickly spread to adjoining buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More than a day later, firefighters remained on scene to douse stubborn hotspots.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was just a bunch of smoke. It was like a whole cloud of smoke,&#8221; neighbor Ashley Mejia said.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/union-city-multi-alarm-wcbshjj0-hi-res-still.jpg#.jpeg\" alt=\"Flames and thick black smoke \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  A large fire broke out in Union City, New Jersey, near 38th Street and Bergen Turnpike on April 18, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>                Lesley Omar Reyes<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There were just the most monumental flames,&#8221; neighbor Ross Williams said. &#8220;A lot of us in our building, we were saying, do we need to evacuate? Are these fumes going to affect us? And luckily, it didn&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Officials said a 74-year-old woman was killed in the fire. Her identity has not yet been released.<\/p>\n<p>Neighbors said the woman was blind and would be seen in front of her home from time to time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;God bless her family,&#8221; Williams said. &#8220;That&#8217;s horrible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dhaliwal-11p-pkg-union-wcbshjpp-hi-res-still.jpg#.jpeg\" alt=\"Firefighters douse hotspots at the scene of a fire \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  Crews continued to douse hotspots at the scene of a deadly fire in Union City on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>                CBS News New York<\/p>\n<p>According to officials, 23 people were also displaced.<\/p>\n<p>Some said work started on the vacant building just this past week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They were doing, like, some fixing over there the other day,&#8221; Mejia said. &#8220;And then this happens all of a sudden. That&#8217;s really weird.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Hudson County Regional Arson Task Force is investigating this fire, which is standard procedure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials are continuing to investigate a deadly fire in Union City, New Jersey. It started Saturday afternoon in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56,35053],"class_list":{"0":"post-202959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-union-city"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}