QUEENS DEATH TRAP
3 die, 4 hurt as fire engulfs foreclosed building
A foreclosed Queens apartment building erupted in flames early Saturday, killing three people, injuring four others and leaving surviving residents stranded in the frosty December air.
The illegally divided three-story building on 48th Ave. near 91st St. in Corona exploded in flames around 5:30 a.m., the FDNY said.
Firefighters responded within two minutes but the building — which neighbors said had recently been sold at auction — was already engulfed in flames.
The blaze ripped through the building too quickly for firefighters to save everyone inside.
“We had a very advanced fire upon arrival, fire on all three floors,” FDNY Chief of Fire Operations Thomas Richardson said at the scene. “In the process of extinguishing the fire and performing our searches, we found three DOAs (dead on arrival), two on the second floor, one on the third floor.”
One man told the Daily News he saw two of his doomed neighbors struggling to escape through a sliding glass door and locked metal gate that led to a patio.
“I watched two guys die right in front of me because I saw the smoke surround them and suffocate them,” said the first-floor resident, who wished not to be named.
“They couldn’t get past the metal door,” he said. “I saw the black smoke just cover them. I was informed one died on top of the other one.”
Panicked residents banged on neighbors’ doors to wake them up as heavy smoke filled the hallways.
“I saw smoke and went down [the] hallway, knock on one guy’s door and yelled, ’Get out! Smoke!’” recalled a second-floor resident, who would only identify himself as Samir.
“I opened the door from the second floor but there was smoke and fire. Black smoke,” he said. “I couldn’t see anything.”
But he could hear the pleas of those he couldn’t save — sounds he said will haunt him for days.
“I could hear the guy scream, ’Help! Help!’ There was nothing I could do. Too much fire,” Samir said somberly.
One person fleeing the blaze jumped from an upper floor in the back of the building, Richardson said.
A firefighter fell from the first floor of the building into the basement after the floor collapsed, sources said. The roof also collapsed into the top floor.
Two FDNY firefighters and two residents were taken to Elmhurst Hospital with minor injuries.
Eight people lived in the building. Two of them were not home at the time and were accounted for, said Richardson.
FDNY fire marshals were investigating what caused the blaze, although it did not appear to be suspicious, sources said.
Before the building went into foreclosure, the former owners broke up the upper floors to create several single-room apartments, said Gustavo Escubero, a former super who now manages the building next door.
“(The landlord) divided up all the rooms, very, very small rooms,” Escubero, 45, said. “No windows, very narrow, he broke apartment building rules. The basement and the floors had 10 people on each one.”
The new owners took over at the beginning of the year and briefly turned off the heat and hot water to force tenants out, but the city ordered them to turn the utilities back on, the former super said.
By summer, most of the tenants had left but several squatters remained, he said.
“The pandemic came and the tenants didn’t leave. I still talk to them and they told me they were
waiting to get evicted,” Escubero said. “Those people did not want to leave.”
The former building owners accrued more than $217,000 in fines before the building went into foreclosure.
Since 2001, the city Department of Buildings has been investigating repeated complaints that the building owner subdivided the two-family home.
In 2018, the agency issued a vacate order for the cellar that was converted into six separate units. The vacate order was still in effect when the fire broke out, DOB officials said.
In January, the DOB received complaints that up to 60 people were living in the building. People were also using drugs and “the whole house smelled of marijuana.”
Escubero said the man who tried to escape onto the patio never got a key to the sliding door from the old owners.
“They would just sit there and look out the window when they needed fresh air. I even asked the landlord about it, but he just said he lost the key,” he said.
“Someone died because of that window,” Escubero said.
Over 130 firefighters worked for hours to douse the flames. It took 2½ hours, until 8 a.m., to bring the fire under control.
“It’s always sad when you have a loss of life, a large loss of life, especially around the holidays,” Richardson said. “Of course, our firefighters are very sensitive to that and we will keep all of these folks in our prayers.”
Surviving residents, a mix of Moroccan and Guyanese immigrants, stood on the sidewalk Saturday morning, shivering in their pajamas as they surveyed their destroyed homes.
Samir, who ran out of the building in a T-shirt, sweatpants and sandals, was given a coat, socks and shoes by a neighbor to keep warm.
“I lost everything, I mean everything, my money, my Social Security, my ID, my passport,” he said.
The resident who saw his two neighbors perish only escaped with his coat and a pair of boots.
“For me, even though I lost property, there’s three lives lost and that’s more important,” he said. “Right now I’m just wrapping myself around this stuff.”