Trump Tower fire kills one resident
Four firefighters injured in blaze engulfing unit on the 50th floor
NEW YORK — A fire broke out Saturday at Trump Tower in Manhattan, killing one person, officials said.
Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro says the fouralarm fire broke out after 5:30 p.m. Saturday in an apartment on the 50th floor of the midtown skyscraper.
Nigro said the person who lived in the apartment died at the hospital. He said four firefighters suffered less serious injuries.
From Washington, President Donald Trump tweeted that the fire was out and said it was “Very confined (well built building).”
The Fifth Avenue skyscraper is the calling card of Trump’s real estate business.
Officials restricted passers-by from the area directly in front of the tower, keeping them out of the street and on the sidewalk on the opposite side of Fifth Avenue.
A 76-year-old resident who was still in the tower said the episode reminded her of the 9/11 attacks.
“When I saw the television, I thought we were finished,” said the woman, Lalitha Masson, who lives on the 36th floor with her husband, Narinder, who is 79 and has Parkinson’s disease.
“I started praying,” Masson continued. “That this was our end. I called my oldest son and said goodbye to him because the way it looked everything was falling out of the window, and it reminded me of 9/11. I witnessed that, and this looked like that, the way the fire was raging from the windows. It was a very, very terrifying experience.”
She said that she did not get any announcement about leaving and that when she called the front desk no one answered.
Dennis Shields, a resident who said he lived on the 42nd floor, described the scene. “You could smell the smoke, and you could hear things falling like through the vents,” he said. “It just smelled like sulfur.”
Shields said there were no orders to evacuate.