Fire on W. 145th St. Severely Injures Firefighter, Displaces 40 Civilians
An unidentified firefighter reportedly fell 40 ft. down a shaft while combatting a six-alarm blaze on Nov. 1, which left him with a “serious” yet “non-life-threatening” injury, the FDNY confirmed to the West Side Spirit. Five civilians and three other firefighters were also treated, and 40 residents displaced.
A six-alarm fire at 528 W. 145th St. left a firefighter severely injured on Nov. 1, the FDNY said. Eight other people were hospitalized for milder injuries, five of them civilians and three of them other firefighters.
Forty people were displaced as a result of the blaze, which erupted on the second floor of the apartment building at around 2:40 p.m., before spreading rapidly to its uppermost sixth floor. A cause of the fire remains under investigation as of press time.
According to the FDNY, the firefighter that suffered a “serious non-life-threatening injury” had tripped backwards out of a window during the response, leading him to plummet 40 ft. down a shaft in the rear of the building. Ten apartments were caught in the inferno. A total of 198 firefighters and EMS personnel responded to the scene, the FDNY confirmed.
During a press conference held later that day, FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker during a press conference held later that day said that the severely-wounded firefighter was being treated in Harlem Hospital. “He received immediate medical care at the bottom of the shaft from the FDNY physicians on the scene,” Tucker said. “Trauma medics, our rescue medics, got to him very quickly.”
Chief of Fire Operations Kevin Woods also provided an explanation as to why the fire had spread so vast: “These old buildings have many, many voids, and the fire gets into these voids. When it got up to the sixth floor, it actually started blowing out of the top floor windows, again.”