Woman, 89, hospitalized as fire rages through Brooklyn home: FDNY
An 82-year-old woman was hospitalized after a raging fire broke out in her Brooklyn home and began spreading to neighboring buildings, FDNY and police said Saturday.
Firefighters worked feverishly to put out the blaze, which erupted inside the three-story home on E. third St. near Beverly Road in Kensington about 5:45 p.m. Friday.
“I was playing video games in my room and then my mom screamed that there was a fire,” said neighbor Ziaul Zidane, 18. “I thought it was my house and then I looked outside and the the whole thing was on fire, there was a lot of smoke. I quickly called 911. I went downstairs and it was just all a blaze.”
“Units found heavy fire on the first floor and the fire quickly escalated to a fourth alarm due to high winds,” the FDNY said on X.
The winds sent the flames to adjacent homes about an hour after the fire began, FDNY officials said.
“The smoke was all over the block. The roofs started falling down after a while,” Zidane recalled. “Sometimes when the [firefighters] sprayed the fire with water, it would stop and then come back again.”
Firefighters found the woman inside the home. EMS rushed her to Maimonides Medical Center in critical condition. She was later transferred to New York Presbyterian-Brooklyn late Friday as her condition improved.
She’s currently in stable condition at the hospital, officials said.
A neighbor who identified herself only as Tania said the injured woman had lived in the house for more than five decades.
“She’s a nice lady,” Tania, 65, said. “She’s a very open-minded person and she has several children in the neighborhood. She would always greet me when I seen her.”
Friday’s fire is hauntingly similar to a fatal blaze that broke out a day earlier in Brooklyn, where a 99-year-old woman perished.
Alemise Marcellus was found dead in the basement of her Flatbush apartment building following the Thursday night blaze.
Her son, Roger Arthur, tried to rescue her, but was stopped by a wall of flames as he tried to get to his mother’s bedroom.
“I couldn’t get to her,” Arthur, 69, told the Daily News. “I tried. I almost died.”
FDNY fire marshals were trying to determine what sparked Friday’s fire.