Stupid contractor left hundreds of tenants homeless from building fire

Queens Chronicle

The five-alarm fire at a Sunnyside apartment building last Wednesday, Dec. 20, was determined to have been caused by the use of an illegal torch, the FDNY said last Thursday.

Hundreds of people were displaced by the blaze, according to the office of Borough President Donovan Richards; the American Red Cross in Great New York is assisting 242 people across 101 affected households. Thirty-nine of those 101 were being provided with housing through Wednesday, Dec. 27. Though a Richards spokesperson said members of some households in the building, which has 107 units, per Department of Buildings records, have sought shelter elsewhere with friends and family, it is not clear how many more were displaced; a spokesperson for the Office of Emergency Management said the agency only counts apartments, not people. The Red Cross is encouraging any remaining residents to register with the group.

Among those impacted by the blaze was Melissa Orlando, who has lived in the building for 16 years. She told the Chronicle she was getting out of the shower Wednesday when she smelled what she likened to a campfire.

“I looked out the windows to see if I could see if there was something going on outside,” she said. “I didn’t see anything. And I didn’t hear any sirens. So I went into the hallway to see if I could smell any smoke out in the hallway. I didn’t smell anything out in the hallway, and I didn’t see anything going on. So I just kept checking the Citizen app.”

Sure enough, within 10 minutes, Orlando got an alert for a fire in her own building. She and her son grabbed their coats, phones and wallets and left, alerting neighbors on the way.

According to the Fire Department, a contractor was working in a vacant unit on the sixth floor of 43-09 47 Ave. at about 12 p.m. last Wednesday, and was using a torch to heat lead paint off a metal closet door frame. The employee noticed smoke coming from the door frame, so he removed the plaster from around the frame and saw small flames on the wood studs. He attempted to put out the fire using a bucket of water.

Soon after, an FDNY captain with Engine 325 arrived, and was shown the wooden studs. That’s when the captain realized the fire had extended into the building walls, and ordered the contractor to leave. Soon, it spread to the cockloft, the space between the ceiling and the roof, allowing flames to spread from the middle two wings of the building to the outer two, FDNY officials said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. Within an hour and 15 minutes, the blaze had reached five alarms. After over four and a half hours and 198 firefighters across 44 units responding, the fire was declared under control.

In total, 14 people suffered non-life-threatening injuries; eight of them were civilians, two were police officers and four were firefighters. Six were sent to either Mt. Siani in Astoria or to NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst; four of the 14 refused medical attention.

“Yesterday’s fire in Sunnyside was nothing short of devastating,” Richards wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, Thursday afternoon. “Hundreds of residents are facing so much uncertainty, just days before Christmas.”

According to the FDNY, the owner of the contracting company was issued three criminal summonses for the use of an illegal torch and lacking fire guards and a certificate of fitness.