2 DEADLY BLAZES
Separate Brooklyn fires one mile apart both prove fatal
TWO PEOPLE died in separate Brooklyn blazes Thursday, including an 81-year-old grandmother whose family desperately tried to save her.
Gertrude Duncan died inside the first-floor apartment she shared with her daughter and a friend on Pacific St. in Crown Heights.
The fire broke out about 12:30 a.m., FDNY officials said.
“I woke up and saw smoke everywhere,” said the victim’s daughter, Barbara Wilson, 61, as tears streamed down her face.
Wilson ran to help her mother but found the door to her room locked. “I tried to go inside,” she said. “She liked her privacy.”
Duncan’s grandson, Brandon Anderson, 35, who lives in an upstairs apartment, broke down the door to the victim’s room but was unable to get to her because of the dense smoke.
“We looked and looked but the smoke was too thick,” recalled Preston Godfrey, 85, the friend who lived with the victim and her daughter.
Godfrey and the victim’s relatives were eventually overcome themselves by the smoke and forced to flee.
Fire officials say they do not suspect criminality. Around the time they brought the fire under control, they found Duncan dead in her room.
A mother of seven, Duncan was remembered as a loving grandmother — not just to her own grandkids but to everybody in the neighborhood.
“The kids called her grandma,” Godfrey said. “They come by the stoop and give her a kiss. She was a very nice lady.”
Less than 24 hours later and a mile away, a fire in an apartment on Kingston Ave. by Lefferts Ave. left one person dead and four others hurt.
Firefighters found the victim’s body in the second-floor apartment where the blaze began just after 10 p.m., authorities said.
Gary Lawson, 73, said he fled the apartment as the smoke became more intense, but lost track of his roommate amid the chaos.
Authorities wouldn’t confirm early Friday if his roommate was the person who died in the fire.