A fire at a Midtown Manhattan building on Friday morning sent smoke billowing into the sky, already hazy with smoke from Canadian wildfires.<\/p>\n
The Fire Department received a report around 7 a.m. of a duct fire at a restaurant at East 54th Street and Madison Avenue, John Corcoran, the New York Fire Department\u2019s deputy assistant chief for Manhattan, said at a news conference. The restaurant\u2019s ductwork is connected to an adjoining 43-story commercial building, he said.<\/p>\n
Over 200 people were evacuated from the office building, the chief said, adding that five people had minor injuries and one of them was taken to a hospital.<\/p>\n
The fire was under control by around 9:30 a.m., the Fire Department said. The cause was under investigation. The connected ductwork posed challenges to firefighters, according to Chief Corcoran, who called it \u201ca very unique operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evacuated workers waited for hours on the sidewalk on Friday morning as fire crews continued to work. On East 54th Street, about a dozen line cooks from the office building\u2019s restaurants sat on a curb, still wearing their kitchen uniforms.<\/p>\n
Edwin Mejia, 22, a cook at Santi, said that around 7 a.m. he left his kitchen to go to the bathroom and saw a cook from Papillon, where the fire started, running around frantically looking for an official to report the blaze.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked distraught. But he couldn\u2019t find anyone,\u201d Mr. Mejia said. \u201cThe building had just opened.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Dominick Vecchione, 66, an accountant, arrived to work just after 7 a.m., he saw a yellow plume wafting from the top of the building and smelled smoke, but figured it was related to the wildfires in Canada. He was evacuated, he said, as he watched dozens of firefighters arrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just kept coming,\u201d he said. \u201cMore and more firemen. More and more equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 10:30 a.m., East 53rd and East 54th Streets were closed to traffic between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue. At least a dozen fire trucks and other emergency vehicles remained on the scene. The city\u2019s emergency notification system advised<\/a> \u201cavoiding smoke exposure from structural fires by closing windows while indoors and reducing outdoor activity where smoke is present.\u201d<\/p>\n The air quality had improved slightly<\/a> in New York City on Friday morning, but was still considered \u201cunhealthy<\/a>\u201d in other parts of the state, according to state officials, and the reprieve could be short-lived<\/a>, with smoke returning over the weekend.<\/p>\n Glenn Casey, 68, a maintenance worker at the building, said he was called to the basement below Papillon just before 7 a.m. to respond to a water leak.<\/p>\n \u201cThe water was dripping down from the walls; it was dripping down so dang fast,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were trying to scoop it up. Then the smoke started to build up real bad. It got into my lungs.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Casey, who had been waiting outside for hours, said the poor air quality had only made the experience more miserable.<\/p>\n \u201cMy lungs are hurting,\u201d he said. \u201cI need to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fire at a Midtown Manhattan building on Friday morning sent smoke billowing into the sky, already hazy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[583,84246,113811,43405,9,24,55,54,56,821,25998],"class_list":["post-299532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-air-pollution","tag-fires-and-firefighters","tag-madison-avenue-manhattan","tag-midtown-area-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-restaurants","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299532","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=299532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}