At least 16 people were displaced after a fire tore through an apartment building in Ossining, New York, where officials suspect a lightning strike during a storm sparked the flames Friday night.<\/p>\n
The fire happened at the Parth Knolls apartment complex. At least one building is expected to be a total loss, said Town Supervisor Liz Feldman.<\/p>\n
No injuries were reported as of the time the crew left the scene around 2 a.m.<\/p>\n
Neighbors reported hearing what sounded like an explosion during the storm and said the fire broke out minutes later.<\/p>\n
“We were just sitting, watching TV and saw some lightning. Then, it was a large strike of lightning, lit up the whole house,\u201d Larry Partelow told NBC New York.\u00a0 \u201cAnd then a big boom afterwards.\u00a0 So I can only assume it hit the house.”<\/p>\n
“Well, we said ‘it sounded like it hit something.’ It was that close,” another neighbor added.<\/p>\n
Firefighters from across Westchester County battled the flames for at least six hours, according to Ossining Fire 2nd Asst. Chief Joseph Rinaldi.<\/p>\n
Rinaldi said the call came in at 6:58 p.m.after the planned Ossining Fire Dept. Parade was canceled due to weather.\u00a0 He said the initial call was for a possible lightning strike and smoke, and crews found heavy smoke on the roof when they arrived.<\/p>\n
Police and firefighters quickly searched the building and evacuated at least six families. He said fire then immediately started coming through the roof.<\/p>\n
There are 24 apartments in the building.<\/p>\n
The building next to it was also emptied out because of smoke and the proximity.<\/p>\n
Rinaldi said there was a water pressure issue, so crews used tankers and pond water.<\/p>\n
Town inspectors and insurance inspectors were expected at the scene today, and the building inspector and fire officials were also set to return to determine next steps, according to officials.<\/p>\n
Rinaldi said it would be up to engineers to determine whether people can go back inside to retrieve belongings.<\/p>\n
Questions about working smoke alarms will be part of the investigation. A tenant told News 4 she didn\u2019t hear anything and only saw smoke before she started knocking on doors.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC New York. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC New York journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least 16 people were displaced after a fire tore through an apartment building in Ossining, New York,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,1628],"class_list":["post-316935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-westchester-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316935","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=316935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}