A fire in a Brooklyn residential building briefly trapped at least one firefighter, the New York City Fire Department said Friday morning.
The four-alarm fire occurred in Brooklyn Heights around 6:00 a.m. and forced multiple evacuations as flames billowed through the building and created thick smoke.
Seven firefighters suffered non-life threatening burns while working to put out the fire. At least one of those members was briefly trapped, Chief Operating Officer John Hodgens said.
It was unclear where the fire’s location was when the first crews arrived on the scene, Hodgens said, but the first crews quickly spread across the second, third, fourth and fifth floors of the brownstone.
“My kids screamed because the internet and cable were cut … then I looked out the window and we saw at least 20 fire trucks. Then I saw smoke and flames starting to appear in a building on Montague Street,” Jeremy Feinstein said , who lives nearby.
One person became homeless and is being assisted by the Red Cross, but no civilians were injured.
Hodgens said two of the neighboring buildings were evacuated as a precaution, but neither suffered damage from fire.
It took hours to get the fire under control for the firefighters who were still fighting the call around 12:00 p.m.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
– .
