Temple of doom vid clue

Three people spotted fleeing LES synagogue blaze

Three people were caught on surveillance video fleeing an abandoned Lower East Side synagogue as it erupted in flames, police sources said Monday.

The footage shows the trio sprinting from the historic Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue — which has been plagued by trespassing teens for weeks — right around the start of Sunday’s 7 p.m. blaze, sources said.

“It’s just devastating. There’s no other way to put it,’’ Holly Kaye, who worked for years to save the 167-year-old structure, said of the destruction.

Aerial photos show the charred landmarked building on Norfolk Street completely gutted and its facade destroyed.

A witness told FDNY marshals that he also saw the three people running from the synagogue as smoke began billowing from it, sources said.

Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were briefly at the scene Monday. A high-ranking police source said the agents were there because the structure is a synagogue.

Authorities were still investigating the cause of the blaze.

But Kaye said she doesn’t believe the fire was the result of a hate crime.

She said trespassers had been climbing up the building’s fire escape on its south wall in recent weeks, creating such a nuisance that the rabbi asked the FDNY to allow him to remove the fire escape to stop them. Fire officials refused, she said.

A small fire broke out at the site on May 7, Kaye said.

“It seems like it was malicious nonsense from kids playing around,” said Kaye, founder of the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy.

Kaye said the fire was especially heartbreaking because the congregation had been in the middle of a deal with the neighborhood’s Chinese-American Planning Council that would have funded renovations for the synagogue building.

Under the deal, the council would have bought air rights from the synagogue to build a tall building in the lot behind it.

The synagogue would then use the proceeds to build a JewishChinese community center on the property, with a place of worship in the basement.

“We were all set. A developer was going to come and renovate the synagogue and everything,’’ said the synagogue’s rabbi, Mendel Greenbaum.

“I’d been working on this for years. After going through so much, it’s very painful.”

He noted that the old building was badly deteriorated before the blaze.

FDNY Manhattan Borough Commander Roger Sakowich said at the site Monday that firefighters had been able to gain ac- cess only to the basement so far and not the first floor because of the collapse of the roof.

Sakowich, who said the building has sat vacant for 10 years, added that there were no reports of missing people or injuries.