One person was killed and seven were injured in a three-alarm fire that tore through an Upper East Side apartment building Monday night, drawing more than 130 firefighters to battle the flames.
The fire broke out inside a unit in the six-story building at 526 E. 82nd St. around 7:15 p.m. and quickly spread to neighboring apartments before it was upgraded to a three-alarm blaze in less than a half hour, FDNY officials said.
The inferno began on the fifth floor of the building and spread to the fourth and sixth, as well as the space between the top floor ceiling and roof of the building, according to fire officials.
Approximately 138 fire and EMS personnel fought the flames. The FDNY’s robotics team was also on-site, using drones to surveil the burning building.
One person was killed, another was injured and six firefighters sustained minor injuries and were treated for smoke inhalation, Assistant Chief of EMS Paul Miano said during a press conference at the scene.
The FDNY did not share any information about the person killed, including if they were a resident of the building.
Approximately eight to 10 of the 23 units inside the building were impacted by the fire, FDNY Assistant Chief Tom Currao said at the press conference.
Firefighters had to tear down entire walls in the building to ventilate the roof, and they were still conducting a second round of searches and sifting through debris late Monday night.
The blaze appeared to be mostly extinguished by 9:15 p.m. as bystanders flooded the streets to watch on.
Residents of the burning apartment building sat on the sidewalk wrapped in blankets as smoke filled the air.
Kate Connors, a 23-year-old retail worker who lives on the second floor of the apartment building, rushed outside when the fire broke out. Connors, who stood on the sidewalk in a red and white emergency blanket, said the fire had left her “scared” and “confused.”
“We heard yelling like, ‘Get out, get out!’ so we opened our door and smelt the smoke and came outside and the flames were coming through the window…we could smell it when we came out,” Connors told The Post. “We just started sprinting out. We grabbed our phone. We just ran out.”
Connors has lived in the building since August. She said she spoke to the woman who lives in the apartment where the fire reportedly started and the woman blamed it on bad electrical wiring in the walls that the landlord hadn’t addressed.
Matthew Meyers, 32, also evacuated his second-floor apartment around 7:30 p.m. He was huddled in an emergency blanket, apparently still in shock as he shivered in the cold.
“They started banging and screaming in the hall stairwell. Fire! Fire! Fire!” Meyers told The Post.
“The first responders came. They were super quick. No sooner than I got out of the building and they were already there. I’m on the second floor. So I was it was easy peasy for me [to evacuate]” he said. “It wasn’t crowded, but it was noisy. Once I was out and actually in the hallway in the stairwell, it smelled of smoke.”
Meyers said he spotted the flames bursting out near the top of the building the minute he exited.
“There was a blaze out of the window and I’m not sure if it’s the top floor or the floor right under it. It was not exactly on the roof. Fire [was] coming out of a window. And it was pretty, pretty scary,” he said.
Many of the building’s residents had taken shelter in the lobby of a nearby building as the temperatures dropped through the night. It’s unclear if and when many will be able to return to their homes.
The FDNY remains on the scene and operations are still ongoing.
