6 firefighters among injured in Ocean Hill fire, 31 left homeless
OCEAN HILL, Brooklyn (WABC) -- Nine people are hurt after a fire broke out at a row of homes in Brooklyn.
Six of the injured include firefighters tasked with putting out the flames.
It happened at 2411 Dean St. in the Ocean Hill section just after 10:30 p.m. Monday.
Most of the injured are firefighters and more than 30 people are now without a place to live.
The damage left behind from this fire is eye-opening as this multi-alarm fire burned the homes and left them in shambles with blown-out windows.
The FDNY says the roof of the first building to catch fire collapsed into the top floor as firefighters battled to keep the flames from spreading. One neighbor says the fire was stubborn and up put up a fight.
"It was like an inferno, everything was fire, fire. It was flames coming out, then the fire kept moving from one house to the next, to the next. It went through four houses. So the firefighters started fighting the fire in this house but then the other house keep going, so they went back and forth, back and forth," Federico Pagan told Eyewitness News.
The FDNY says the fire spread through the cocklofts to four of the other homes on Dean Street.
Another woman who lost everything in the fire said she'd only stepped out for a few minutes before she came back home to chaos.
"I was worried because it's an older guy who was in the second floor. Like, we're happy he was able to get out as well. And yeah, it was a lot of actually like three or four elderly people and they were all able to get out. So but it's just crazy like how everybody lives is just like disturbed now at this point," Hope Hatcher, fire victim, told Eyewitness News.
One person reportedly jumped out of the building to escape the flames, according to witnesses.
Overhead drone images captured by the FDNY shows crews working for hours to get things under control. They completely doused the flames after three hours.
An investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing.
People who live in the building where the fire started say nothing inside is salvageable.
Officials say the roofs of all five buildings partially collapsed, and the Department of Buildings has issued a full vacate order.
The property owners will have to install a fence around the buildings.
Meanwhile, Red Cross NY's disaster team responded to the fire and provided 10 families with emergency housing and financial assistance.
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