Flushing fire kills 2 at house with history of problems

From CBS 2:

Two people were killed in an overnight house fire in Queens.

Authorities have confirmed the victims were a father and his young son whose twin brother survived.

As CBS2’s John Dias reports, the Flushing home was destroyed in the fire.

Police confirmed a 6-year-old boy died in the fire, along with a 65-year-old man. Neighbors told Dias it’s a father and his son.

Cellphone video shows flames shooting out of the home at 45-54 157th Street in Flushing, Queens.

It all happened just after 1 a.m

So unbelievably tragic. What could have happened?

Nothing to see here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Update

NY Daily News

The home was in the middle of various repairs, with blue tarps covering part of the building. It’s not clear if the renovations played a role in the blaze, but last February a contractor linked to the home settled a case with the city, apparently paying a fine after being cited for an unstable shed constructed in the driveway.

Department of Buildings records said the shed and backyard were filled with household debris and tools scattered about.

 

Cellar murder story’s twist

From NBC:

The father of two toddlers who were found seriously hurt in their Queens home last week — one of whom later died — jumped to his death from a Midtown hotel, police sources said.

Mohammad Reza Torabi, the father of the 1-year-old twins, was found dead Saturday after jumping from the Renaissance New York Hotel 57 on East 57th Street, according to police sources.

Police had been interested in questioning Torabi about the incident prior to his death, the sources said.

Auburndale cellar becomes murder site

From CBS 2:

Police said they were called to a home on Ashby Avenue in the Auburndale neighborhood shortly before 10 p.m. Wednesday.

Sources told CBS2 the woman lived in the basement unit with five children, all under the age of 10. She was the only adult home at the time, sources said.

Police said officers found the little girl, identified as 1-year-old Elaina Torabi, unconscious and unresponsive and rushed her to Flushing Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Her brother was taken to Cohen Children’s Medical Center in critical condition.

The Administration for Children’s Services removed three other girls, ages 2, 4, and 5, from the home, unharmed. Sources told CBS2 there was no ACS history at the house.

Ozone Park cellar fire kills sleeping landlord

From CBS 2:

Police say 68-year-old landlord Mohinder Singh was in the basement of the home and didn’t make it out alive. When the more than 60 firefighters got the blaze under control, they found him lifeless inside.

Roughly nine others who live in three-story multi-family home woke up to thick smoke. They ran out in pajamas, rushing to safety.

According to DOB records, this house is not a "multi-family" but a 2 family. That's also a cellar and not a basement. No one should have been sleeping in the cellar.

DeBlasio pushing forward with basement legalization pilot

From PIX11:

A large number of Queens civic leaders gathered at State Sen. Tony Avella's office this afternoon to speak out passionately.

According to State Sen. Avella, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who several years ago first talked of legalizing basement apartments, is now revisiting the issue as a solution to the city's affordable housing crisis.

Currently, there are over 100,000 cellar or basement apartments being rented illegally city wide.

Here is the statement to PIX11 News from Melissa Grace, Deputy Press Secretary, Mayor’s Press Office de Blasio administration:

"Any legalization of basement apartments would be based on their meeting safety codes to protect residents. A multi-agency working group, including HPD, DOB, FDNY, and DCP, is working with Councilman Espinal and multiple community-groups active in East New York to study the feasibility of a basement legalization pilot program in that community."

Housing inspector illegally converted his cellar

From the DNA Info:

A housing inspector endangered the lives of his tenants by violating the same building codes the city employed him to enforce, the Queens District Attorney’s office announced Tuesday.

Derrick Allen, 58, a Brooklyn inspector for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development who owns two buildings in Queens, was charged Tuesday with illegally converting the cellar space in his Rosedale and St. Albans properties into dangerous living quarters, according to the DA’s office.

The units — hooked up to illegal gas and water lines — lacked adequate exits and natural light, which District Attorney Richard Brown noted made the residencies dangerous not only for tenants, but emergency responders as well.

“Such conversions jeopardize the lives of not only the buildings’ residents but firefighters and other personnel who in responding to an emergency are confronted by a maze of rooms with no way out,” said Brown in a statement.

“As a code enforcement inspector himself, the defendant should have known better.”

The Housing Department first became aware of Allen’s practices as a landlord on Aug. 18 when an illegal tenant in his Rosedale building called 311 to complain about building maintenance, according to the DA.

Housing inspectors arrived one week later to find four illegal single-room residencies in the basement with access to only one exit, as well as a shared kitchen with an illegal gas stove and a bathroom with a hole in the ground where a toilet once stood, the DA said.

Tenants were ordered to vacate the premises immediately due to the unsafe circumstances, the DA said.

Stop work order at day care with cellar conversion

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Department of Buildings issued a stop-work order pursuant to its intent to revoke permits and approvals for a construction project at a Happy Dragon day care center in Flushing on July 7. Its decision comes little more than two weeks after land-use expert Paul Graziano and state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) warned that the project — which includes a cellar conversion — could be dangerous for the children.

The building is located at 30-04 146 St.

In an interview last month, Graziano said he had never heard of a day care center legalizing a cellar and expressed concern that using the building’s cellar would put the children’s lives at risk.

Woman dies in cellar fire

From the NY Post:

A 30-year-old woman was killed in a Brooklyn blaze Sunday morning, police said.

The flames broke out in an apartment building at 2227 Homecrest Ave. in Sheepshead Bay about 6:30 a.m.

Sixty firefighters from 12 units battled the fire for about an hour before it was extinguished.

The woman, whose identity wasn’t released, was taken to Coney Island Hospital, where she died, cops said.

The fire started in the basement, and the Fire Marshall’s Office is investigating, fire officials said.

I hope they can figure this one out. It's baffling.

Hazardous condition down below

I couldn't resist taking a peek at this document posted in the doorway of a giant crap pile at 1075 Seneca Avenue in Ridgewood. There is apparently an illegal cellar apartment here that was forcibly vacated.

Note the gorgeously landscaped parking area.

Interesting how there are no fines for this.

Man killed in "basement apartment"

From the Times Ledger:

Hours after police officers from the 105th Precinct celebrated National Night Out against Crime in Cabbell Park in Cambria Heights Playground with nearby residents, a Queens Village resident was found shot dead in a basement near 212nd Street, police said.

After 1 a.m. Wednesday, police discovered 25-year-old Jermain Gladimer shot dead in his basement apartment under a beauty salon on Jamaica Avenue in Queens Village, police said.

He was living in a store cellar?

The whole East Village is illegally converted

From the Wall Street Journal:

City inspections of more than 50 buildings in the East Village following the fatal March 26 explosion and fire at 121 Second Ave. have turned up violations related to gas lines, fire safety and illegal construction, city records show.

The blast, which leveled three buildings and killed two people, is being treated as a case of suspected gas diversion, officials have said. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating to determine if any criminal charges are warranted.

Two weeks after the blast, area residents remain concerned that problems that bedeviled 121 Second Ave. leading up to the explosion—a record of unlicensed construction work and building and housing violations—could be mirrored in their own buildings, some of which have records of complaints and violations going back years.

At one building across the street from the blast, gas has been shut off after inspections revealed construction without a permit and potentially illegal gas siphoning, records and interviews show. At another, Department of Buildings records show a violation for an improperly placed gas meter and new complaints alleging illegal boiler work, among other concerns.

Since March 26, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has issued violations at a number of buildings on the block, ranging from faulty locks, doors, handrails and windows to blocked fire escapes, lack of gas and failure to register as a multiple family dwelling with the department. One building was cited by the department for illegal use of the cellar as residential space, records show.

Recent complaints to the Department of Buildings for buildings on the block show concerns about unlicensed construction, fire hazards, and illegal conversion of space for bedrooms.

Drugs sold out of illegal cellar apartment beneath daycare center

From Eyewitness News:

A man was arrested for allegedly dealing drugs out of the basement of a Queens building that also houses his father's day care.

Police sources say 24-year-old Michael Gomez and his associate, 23-year-old Selestino Rodriguez, were taken into custody during a raid at the building on 88th Avenue in Woodhaven around 5 a.m. Thursday.

Detectives learned that Gomez was selling the drugs out of his basement apartment, below where his father operates a licensed day care, My Precious Moments Daycare, on the upper floors.

Undercover officers had made numerous drug buys in the basement apartment before making the arrests.

Marijuana, Molly, ecstasy pills and more than $2,500 in cash were seized.

(Correction: He was selling drugs out of his illegal cellar apartment which has had a vacate order since 2008.)

Woodhaven wants housing left alone

From The Forum:

Perhaps the most ambitious project of his mayoralty, Hizzoner Bill de Blasio’s 10-year, five-borough affordable housing plan is not without its critics.

Just ask some residents of Woodhaven.

“It’s a cheap way for the city to provide ‘affordable housing,’” said Sherman Kane at last Thursday’s meeting of the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association. “It costs the city nothing. We, as middle-class homeowners, would be providing the solution.”

In late July, the WRBA reached out to the mayor’s office via a letter expressing their concerns and requesting more information, and has even circulated a petition decrying the $41 billion project. The civic has not received a response.

“We just wanted to be more educated on what [de Blasio] is trying to do,” said WRBA President Martin Colberg last week.

Colberg noted that one of the main concerns is zoning, and how the plan will involve green-lighting basement and attic apartments. Published reports indicate that de Blasio is keen on converting previously illegal basement and cellar dwellings.

“We worked hard to keep the zoning the way it is, to keep the character the way it is,” he said. “Just shoving people into a basement or attic is not the answer.”

Colberg said the mayor’s sweeping response cannot come at the expense of a community’s character and the lives therein.

“We’re talking about safety—of the NYPD, of the FDNY, if they have to go into the [converted] house, the safety of neighbors,” Colberg posited. “Whether you’re a renter or a homeowner, you’re going to be affected by this.”

Illegal cellar business in burned Astoria building

From Astoria Post:

Seven people, including 5 firefighters, suffered minor injuries after a fire broke out in a two story building in Astoria in the early of hours this morning, according to an FDNY spokesman.

The fire started at 1:04 am at 25-88 41st Street (near 28th Avenue), and when firefighters arrived on the scene the house was ablaze.

How lovely.

There were a litany of complaints about this property and 8 open DOB violations.

Illegal basement apartments should remain so

From a letter to the editor [Times Ledger]:

The legalization of basement apartments is high on the agenda of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Civic organizations have spent the last decade working tirelessly to protect residential communities from overdevelopment through the process of rezoning.

After a long, hard struggle, most residential areas have finally been rezoned and, we assumed, are now protected from abusive overdevelopment. Some of the problems associated with overcrowding is the lack of infrastructure required for the existing population.

Adding more people to residential neighborhoods will increase class sizes that are already overcrowded, overloading our inadequate sewer systems — not to speak of parking. These are the most obvious problems, but safety must be a major consideration.

Basement apartments have always been illegal for good reasons. Many deaths have already occurred as a result of basement occupancy. Windows are usually too high and small to use as a point of egress in an emergency. Basements generally have only one means of escape and, if it cannot be reached, the occupants are doomed in the event of fire or flooding.

These horrible living quarters are usually damp and susceptible to the growth of unhealthy mold and a breeding area for bugs. Basements have been known to be a common place for the initiation of a fire, major gas or water leaks and sewer back-ups — not ideal for human habitation.

The mayor and the City Council should remember that all civic organizations have been fighting the passage of this agenda item for good reason. They should also remember that civic members are also loyal members of the voting population for both the general elections as well as the all-important primaries.

Joe Amoroso
Zoning Chairman
Kissena Park Civic Association

SROs in a 69th Street hovel

I'm not sure they have enough "for rent" signs on this property at 59-15 69th Street, but they slightly beat the giant "TUTORING" sign that used to hang from the second floor

Now you gotta wonder if it's even possible to drive a vehicle down that ramp to the garage. I guess we don't need to find out since this complaint was recently called in.

And back in 2008, a vacate order was served after SROs were found there.

Thank you "Baron Development, LLC" for ass-raping the neighborhood.

More Ciafone fun!

14-55 Broadway. He owes quite a bit on this property. There's also a partial vacate order from 2011 when the basement was found to have SROs in it. (Complaint says 2-family house, though, perhaps an error.)

He makes it so easy to find his properties.

The stucco work is just sublime.
and the HPD violations on this are astounding.

What the heck is a semi-basement?

From Property Pusher:



So, is a "semi-basement" the same as a cellar? Because that's certainly what this looks like.

Civics say "hell no!" to basement apartments

From the Queens Chronicle:

Mayor de Blasio’s multifaceted approach to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over the next decade is ambitious and, many agree, noble.

But one of the ways he plans to attain that goal has Queens civic leaders up in arms.

In a Jan. 22 New York Times article, de Blasio is reported as favoring legalizing some illegal basement and cellar apartments. On the housing page of his campaign website, it is said that de Blasio “will end the practice of pretending these homes and their families don’t exist.

“As mayor, he will bring them into the regulated housing system, ensure they meet legal standards for safety, and work to bring them under rent-regulation,” the page says.

Queens Civic Congress President Richard Hellenbrecht believes such a plan is simply “inconceivable.”

“There’s a reason for zoning. Our neighborhoods are designed to be lived in by a certain occupancy,” Hellenbrecht said. “If [de Blasio] said, all of a sudden, you can develop basement apartments and it started happening in Bellerose, I’m gone. I’ll move out tomorrow if that happened.”

Hellenbrecht believes that legalizing a number of illegal basement apartments would add another level of stress on many already overcrowded school districts and the public transportation and sewer systems.

“It would just decimate neighborhoods. It would really destroy a lot of neighborhoods and bring down property values,” he said. “I really haven’t heard of anyone else really supporting this. No way in hell.”

Forest Hills Civic Association President Barbara Stuchinski also didn’t shy away from expressing her dislike of such a plan, calling it “absolute bull.”

“I am totally opposed. The answer to affordable housing is not sticking people in basements. I wouldn’t want to keep my dog in the basement,” Stuchinski said. “Who wants to raise a child in a basement? I would be out there picketing if I knew children were being raised in basements.

“The possibilities for extremely hazardous conditions are endless. Potential for loss of life is endless. A fire? Boom, you’re dead,” she continued. “Your boiler and hot water heaters are down there, and every time it rains, basements flood.”

Stuchinski also expressed worries that any influx of people living in such dwellings would strain infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and sewer pipes that are already stretched to the limit.

The Mayor’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on the issue.

A long, long time ago, my ancestors came here with nothing but the clothes on their back. They worked at unskilled trades, yet were able to afford apartments that were not subterranean. Yet, the more development we allow, the less affordable apartments seem to become.

Murray Hill fire death

From the Daily News:

A 63-year-old man died after a fire ripped through the basement of a Queens apartment building early Friday, authorities said.

The blaze began at 5:59 a.m. in the structure at 159th St. at 43rd Ave. in Murray Hill, police said. The victim was pulled from the flames with severe burns and trauma, police said.

From the Queens Chronicle:

The victim, whose identity was not immediately announced because his family had not yet been notified, was found with severe trauma and burns to his body inside of 43-06 159 St. after the authorities responded to a fire there a little after 6 a.m., police said. Emergency Medical Services took the man to New York Hospital Queens, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

From the NY Post:

A 63-year-old man appeared to have been badly beaten before he was pulled from a suspicious Flushing blaze and pronounced dead Friday, authorities said.

Looking at the previous complaints on this address, it appears there was an illegal conversion in the cellar where the body was found. Considering a beating was involved, goodness knows what else was going on in that cellar.