FDNY: 4 apartments heavily damaged in Mott Haven fire; 5 minor injuries
The FDNY said three tenants and two firefighters suffered minor injuries but are expected to be OK.
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Dozens of families were forced out of their apartments on Easter Sunday when a four-alarm fire ripped through their building on Cypress Avenue in Mott Haven.
Deneen Taylor told News 12 she was sleeping when a neighbor began banging on her door.
“I opened up the door, and at this point I’m shaking,” said Taylor. “And [the neighbor] said, ‘There’s a fire somewhere!’ And I was like, ‘Oh no!”
Taylor said she lived on the sixth floor – which is the top floor where the FDNY said the fire started in the space between the roof and ceiling known as the cockloft.
“I saw the smoke coming from the ceiling, all the light fixtures in the hallway,” Taylor said. “There were no alarms, no nothing.”
The FDNY said the flames broke out around 2:30 p.m.
Elizabeth Velazquez said she grabbed her dog, Buttercup, and got out of their second-floor apartment, while also helping to notify her neighbors.
“The hallway was full of smoke,” said Velazquez. “That’s when I started calling all my neighbors to get out.”
One of those calls went to 86-year-old Jeff Moore and his family.
Moore, who uses a walker, said they needed help from firefighters to get out and to put out their Easter dinner on the second floor.
“We just got out of [the apartment] and we left the oven on,” Moore said. “I sent the fire department back up to cut the oven off.”
Officials said four apartments on the top floor had heavy damage.
Taylor hopes she’s not one of them.
“Now I don’t know what I have left in there,” Taylor said.
As of Sunday night, it is unknown exactly how many tenants are displaced, but the Red Cross said they’re using a nearby public school as temporary shelter and offering help.
The FDNY said three tenants and two firefighters suffered minor injuries but are expected to be OK.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
