After already rallying to aid the victims of the devastating Madison Street fire in Ridgewood earlier this month, residents came together to help others displaced by yet another fire within the neighborhood at Ecua Tire Shop on Flushing Avenue.
The three-alarm fire spread to all three floors of the building, displacing nine families and eight children in total, and injuring at least 11 people, including several of the first responders, according to the FDNY.
Located at 1905 Flushing Ave., on the crossroad of Woodward Avenue, the tire shop has two extra floors for residential apartments above it. Residents reported that the fire, emanating from the store, spread so quickly, they were forced to leave everything behind: including pets, who unfortunately perished during the emergency. FDNY Assistant Chief David Sims called the blaze a “deep-seated and stubborn fire,” due to the complications that came with the burning rubber from the many tires in the building.
A week later, scorch marks can be seen emanating from the windows and an entire section of the back wall completely crumbled. Much like the Madison Street fire that broke out on Jan. 5, this fire occurred in the early hours of a weekend morning at 4 a.m. and required nearly 200 FDNY personnel to contain.
According to an employee who works in the same back lot connected to the building, the fire caused a pipe to burst on the Northeast side of the building, flooding the area and freezing over due to the extreme cold. The tire shop’s owner, Manny Gartacaca, plans to use the rear parking lot to continue the business in some capacity in the near future, as long as he can secure proper permits from the city. Ridgewood locals, dismayed at the tire shops destruction, celebrated Gartacaca’s reliability and practices as a small business owner.
“I just went the other day! They couldn’t help me on my issue, so they said ‘no charge.’ Of course I tipped them. I’ve been to them two to three times… [it’s a] big loss for the community,” wrote one user on social media.
According to sources, the entire building will have to be demolished due to the severity of the damage, leaving things uncertain for both his business and the 30+ individuals who resided there.
Ridgewood Neighbors, a social media community run by Queens Community Board 5 member Ravahn Rodriguez, secured $20,000 through Venmo during a charity drive for the fire earlier this month. Since then, she’s collected more donations for specific families. The Madison Street fire, which displaced about 30 families spread across three separate apartment buildings, saw a massive community push for support will hundreds of items donated and over $70,000 raised between several online charity drives.
However, the Flushing Avenue fire has not yet received the same push from the community. Gartacaca stated that he’s not heard of any efforts to aid him or the families affected, though he is not in regular contact with them. Currently, only one GoFundMe is online for one of families, started by Alexarys Perdomo, and sits at well short of its $4,500 goal.
“Thank you to everyone who has donated, but we need more of your help. Please share this campaign, as we are far from our goal. We need more kind-hearted people, because we lost everything; we couldn’t save anything, all our hard work turned to ashes,” Perdomo wrote on the campaign site on Jan. 23.
