Village of Hempstead officials say elderly man killed in space heater-related fire
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- As temperatures dipped overnight, Long Island had its first space heater-related fatal fire of the season.
Officials said Monday an elderly man lost his life in an illegally subdivided Hempstead house.
"When I was coming down, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see the stairs," Lucia Bran said.
Bran and her two children were sleeping in an attic apartment when at 5:30 a.m. a downstairs tenant said she went floor to floor alerting 11 people in the house to get out.
"I didn't pay attention to my whereabouts. It was just more like getting my sisters out of the house and making sure everybody else was safe," tenant Jagesly Castellon said.
Castellon said she was woken up by thick smoke seeping up through the floor of her Devon Road house in Hempstead.
"It went from foggy to almost Like I couldn't see anything inside anymore," Castellon said.
But it was too late to alert the 81-year-old man in the basement, where the fire started.
"When I went to go knock on the door, the side door, the door was really hot. I was knocking on it to see if he could wake up, but, unfortunately, he never came to the door," Jerelyn Farfan said.
Fire departments arrived within three minutes. Hempstead Village officials said the tragedy could have been prevented.
"There were two bedrooms in the basement so that is already an illegal dwelling," Hempstead Village Mayor Waylyn Hobbs said.
Hobbs said the single-family home was not intended for its 14 residents, calling it an illegal rental home with an absentee landlord.
"This basement apartment had no means of egress," Hobbs said.
Tenants said smoke detectors did not work.
"It's pretty bad. I think that landlord should have ... we pay to live here, you know?" Bran said.
"I don't put any blame on her. It was more how we didn't check in with the smoke alarms. It could have been that," Castellon added.
"It is your responsibility as the homeowner and you're renting to people that you should make sure that your smoke detectors and CO alarms are functioning," Hobbs said.
As for the cause of the fire, the fire marshal said a space heater was plugged into a power strip, and that was plugged into an overloaded outlet.
For safety, a space heater should only be plugged directly into a wall outlet, officials said.
Officials did not name the victim or the landlord, but said the homeowner could face charges as a result of code violations that led to the man's death.
