Woman, 86, dies in Queens NYCHA apartment fire; week’s fourth deadly NYC blaze
An 86-year-old woman died in a fire that ripped through her Queens apartment early Saturday — the fourth fire death to rock the city in a week, officials said.
The fire broke out in the sixth-floor apartment on 12th Street near 41st Avenue in NYCHA’s Queensbridge South Houses just after 2:15 a.m., the FDNY said.
Neighbors woke up to choking smoke and firefighters banging on their doors, yelling at them to evacuate.
“I don’t know how the smoke got in. Maybe through the windows,” said Tyrelle Washington, 24, who lived next door to the senior’s apartment. “I couldn’t breathe. I was like, ‘What’s happening?’
As he left his apartment, Washington saw the octogenarian, a Dominican woman and longtime tenant who spoke only Spanish, being taken away on a stretcher with severe burns to her arms and legs.
“She wasn’t moving. Her skin was burned,” Washington said. “I was nervous. I’ve known her since I grew up here. She’s been here for a while.”
EMS transported the woman to Mount Sinai Queens, where she died a short time later. His name was not immediately released.
Once everyone was allowed back into their apartment, Washington took a look around the senior’s house. The door was left ajar.
“It was just dark in there,” he said. “You could say something happened in his apartment. I just can’t make sense of it. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Residents remembered the senior as a sociable and active woman, who played cards and bingo with other seniors at a nearby park.
“She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink. In the summer, she played bingo with the old ladies in the park,” recalls a 72-year-old tenant, who only wanted to be identified as Cesar, who was moved by her death.
“Why wouldn’t I be sad?” he said solemnly. “She was a nice lady.”
The FDNY put out the flames within half an hour. No other injuries were reported.
Saturday’s fire was the fourth fatal blaze to occur since Nov. 9, a day after firefighter Patrick Brady died of a heart attack while battling a blaze atop a Brooklyn apartment building, officials said.
An 88-year-old man died Sunday evening after a fire broke out at his home on Woodycrest Avenue in the Bronx, officials said. Three days later, on Wednesday afternoon, a 74-year-old woman died in hospital after a fire tore through her Upper East Side apartment on E. 81st St. near First Ave.
“It was white smoke, a ghostly plume coming out of his door,” a fifth-floor neighbor, 42, of the victim’s Upper East Side told the Daily News at the time. “I called the janitor and the fire department. It was very sad. It was very traumatic.”
The next day, Robert Germain, 89, died from a fire inside his home on 194th Street, near Hollis Court Boulevard. in Auburndale, Queens. Firefighters had to battle through “storage conditions” to fight the blaze.
Germain died instantly. The elderly person lived alone and had no children. Neighbors said he was a cancer survivor who was recently in remission.
FDNY firefighters were investigating the causes of all of the fires, an FDNY official said.
