Five people were killed and three injured in a Brooklyn blaze early this morning that investigators suspect was intentionally set.
The raging inferno appeared to have been set just inside the front door of 2033 86th St. in Bensonhurst around 2:30 a.m., and spread quickly up stairs that led to two crowded apartments above a Japanese restaurant, officials said.
“The fire spread up through the staircase and right up through the roof,” FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said. “It’s a very unusual place for a fire to start. It’s very likely to be incendiary.”
Officials said as many as 20 people – mostly Guatemalan immigrants — lived in the apartments. Many managed to escape down a rear fire escape but the intense blaze trapped several others. Some were forced to toss at least two children out of windows, one of whom, — a 2-month-old girl — suffered a skull fracture when she hit the ground.
Jorge Morales, 39, who lived next door, said he ran out and spotted Luisa Ordonez, 33, and her husband Miguel Chantuy, hanging from the third story window.
“I heard Luisa scream, ‘I’m going to throw my baby,’” he said. “I tried to catch the baby, but she came down with so much force she went through my hands and hit the ground. We didn’t have a chance. Everything happened so quickly. There was no time to think.”
Chantuy then tried to toss their 2-year-old son Josias to a neighbor hanging out a second-story window, but he landed on the awning, as firefighters arrived at the scene. They were able to bring the boy, Chantuy and the neighbor down safely, but Ordonez and four others were not so lucky as the second floor collapsed into the restaurant below.
At first, firefighters were pushed back by the intensity of the blaze and were forced to battle the flames from outside, officials said. When they finally got inside the building, they found Ordonez and three men on the third floor and another man in the rubble of what had been the second floor, Cassano said.
Neighbors identified one of the dead men as Juan Boreno, a construction worker who hailed from Guatemala where he sent money back to his wife and six children.
Manuel Alvaraez, 32, who lived in the back bedroom on the second floor, said he only managed to escape after some of his six roommates had gotten out the back window and brought a ladder.
“We couldn’t; go out the door because there was just too much smoke,” he said. “I had no time to put anything on, I just ran out. I escaped out the back window. Someone found a ladder and put it next to the window and I was able to run down. Thank God I am alive.”
It took firefighters more than two hours to get the blaze under control, but the building was left so destabilized that investigators were barred for hours from entering the remains. Officials at one point halted nearby elevated subway service for fear the vibration could cause the building to collapse.
Officials said it was not immediately clear if the building had been illegally subdivided. Building department records showed the building had been cited for an illegal conversion in 2008, but that the problem had been resolved in January 2009.