A powerful explosion and fire tore through a six-story building under construction in the Longwood section of the Bronx Tuesday evening, sending thick smoke billowing into the sky and neighbors running into the streets.<\/p>\n
The FDNY responded around 5:13 p.m. to 1035 Rev. James A. Polite Ave., where crews used a tower ladder to pour water onto flames shooting from the roof. Paramedics were staged nearby, but say the building was empty at the time of the fire. No injuries were reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounded like a bomb\u2026 it woke me up. I ran straight to my window \u2014 I saw people outside with their hands over their heads running,\u201d one neighbor said.<\/p>\n
Another resident said the force of the explosion shook nearby buildings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way you felt the whole building shake \u2014 you\u2019re thinking it\u2019s a bomb or something else,\u201d Humphrey Ejyir said.<\/p>\n
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson is now calling on the mayor\u2019s office to invest more in the city\u2019s fire response, including adding an additional firefighter to every station after a string of fires across the borough and a deadly blaze in Belmont.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course there\u2019s a cost, but you can\u2019t put a cost on someone\u2019s life,\u201d Gibson said.<\/p>\n
City Hall has not yet responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A powerful explosion and fire tore through a six-story building under construction in the Longwood section of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-212199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212199","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=212199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}