Fire Rips Through 8 Homes In Woodhaven, Queens; 5 Residents Injured
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- An extra-alarm fire ripped through in multiple houses Wednesday evening in Woodhaven, Queens, and left five residents -- including two children -- injured.
The fire broke out inside a two-story house on 90th Street near 91st Avenue in Queens around 8:20 p.m., the FDNY told CBS2.
The fire was raised to four alarms at 8:50 p.m.
As CBS2's Lou Young reported, neighbors say the blaze seems to have started from a lit cigarette in a ground floor room. Suddenly, the whole block was going up.
"It was insane. Everyone was trying to calm me down. I couldn't believe something like this would happen," neighbor Bryan Rampersap said.
The house where the fire started is connected to a row of other homes that were built in the 1930s. The separate structures share a common attic.
Most people heard the shouts from the streets before they could even smell the smoke.
"I just heard somebody screaming, and I come out and see what happened, and when I see the fire, I went back to the house and ripped down my doors, and that's it," said fire victim Douglas Hernandez.
The blaze ended up spreading to a total of eight homes through the attics, the FDNY said.
Five residents -- including two children -- were injured, along with two firefighters, the FDNY said.
But as CBS2's Young reported, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said a major disaster was dodged on Wednesday night.
"If you go towards Atlantic Avenue with the common area in that attic, we could have lost 18 buildings. And the fire was stopped – these buildings can all be reoccupied at some point when they're repaired, and that's a good thing," Nigro said.
All the injuries appeared to be minor, officials said.
Several families were also displaced.