Quantcast

S. Richmond Hill blaze rips through family home: FDNY

By Alex Robinson

Fire marshals were still trying to determine the cause of a three-alarm fire that ripped through a family’s home in South Richmond Hill Sunday morning after it started in the vacant house next door, the FDNY said.

Aiysha Wasi was asleep in her room upstairs when she heard her mother screaming from the kitchen downstairs around 11 a.m.

“I came running down the stairs and that was when I saw the fire through a second-floor window,” she said.

More than 130 firefighters responded to the blaze near the corner of 120th Street and Liberty Avenue at 11:28 a.m., according to fire officials.

Wasi and her family ran out of the house just in time before the fire spread to their home.

Neighbors said the house where the fire started has sat vacant for more than five years and that homeless people tend to squat on the property.

“I woke up to firemen banging on our doors,” said Loretta Hickson, a neighbor who has lived in the area for 17 years. “There was smoke everywhere.”

Hickson said a blaze broke out in January 2013 in the backyard of the same building when she believes a homeless man started a fire in an attempt to keep warm.

“My poor neighbors. They’re just recovering from last year’s fire,” she said. “It’s horrific.”

Wasi said the 2013 fire damaged her family’s garage. She said she thought someone must have broken into the house to set Sunday’s fire as it appeared as if it burned from the top of the house.

The Red Cross was already on scene in the early afternoon Sunday offering shelter to Wasi’s family.

The fire was brought under control by 12:35 p.m. and no one was injured by the blaze, the FDNY said.

“Half of the house is gone. It’s destroyed. My room, my parents’ room — everything is burned down,” said Wasi, who lives in the house with her parents, brother, sister-in-law and niece. “It was terrible. You wake up one morning and you don’t have a roof over your head. Everything collapsed.”

A Fire Department spokesman said the cause of the fire had not yet been determined as it was still under investigation.

Reach reporter Alex Robinson by e-mail at arobinson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.