An 86-year-old woman died as a fire tore through her Queens apartment early Saturday — the fourth fire death to rock the city in a week, officials said.
The fire erupted in the sixth-floor apartment on 12th St. near 41st Ave. at NYCHA’s Queensbridge South Houses just after 2:15 a.m., the FDNY said.
Neighbors woke up to choking smoke and firefighters banging on their doors, shouting at them to evacuate.
“I don’t know how the smoke got in. Maybe the windows,” said Tyrelle Washington, 24, who lived next door to the senior’s apartment. “I couldn’t breathe. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’”
As he exited his apartment, Washington saw the octogenarian, a Dominican woman and longtime tenant who only spoke Spanish, being taken out on a stretcher with extensive burns to her arms and legs.
“She wasn’t moving. Her skin was burned,” Washington said. “I was on edge. I’ve known her since I grew up here. She’s been here quite a while.”
EMS rushed the woman to Mount Sinai Queens, where she died a short time later. Her name was not immediately disclosed.
Once everyone was allowed back into their apartments, Washington peered into the senior’s home. The door had been left ajar.
NYCHA workers removed debris from the fatal apartment fire on Saturday. (Rebecca White / New York Daily News)
“It was just black in there,” he said. “You could tell something happened in her apartment. I just can’t fathom this. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Residents remembered the senior as a sociable, active woman, who would play cards and bingo with other seniors in a nearby park.
“She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink. She used to play bingo with the old ladies in the park in the summer,” remembered one 72-year-old tenant, who only wanted to be identified as Cesar, who appeared moved by her death.
“Why wouldn’t I be sad?” he said solemnly. “She was a nice lady.”
The FDNY put out the flames within a half hour. No other injuries were reported.
Saturday’s blaze was the fourth fatal fire to occur since Nov. 9, a day after Firefighter Patrick Brady died of a heart attack while fighting a blaze atop a Brooklyn apartment building, officials said.
An 88-year-old man died after a fire broke out in his home on Woodycrest Ave. in the Bronx on Sunday evening, officials said. Three days later, on Wednesday afternoon, a 74-year-old woman died at the hospital after a fire tore through her Upper East Side apartment on E. 81st St. near First Ave.
“It was a white smoke, a ghostly plume pouring out of her door,” a fifth-floor neighbor, 42, of the Upper East Side victim told the Daily News at the time. “I called the super and the Fire Department. It was very sad. It was very traumatic.”
The next day, Robert Germain, 89, succumbed to a fire inside his home on 194th St. near Hollis Court Blvd. in Auburndale, Queens. Firefighters had to battle through “hoarder conditions” as they fought the blaze.
Germain died at the scene. The senior lived alone and had no children. Neighbors said he was a cancer survivor who was recently listed in remission.
FDNY fire marshals were investigating the causes behind all of these fires, an FDNY official said.