A fire broke out at a building in Harlem early yesterday morning, leaving four people, including two children, in critical condition. The fire is believed to have been started when a still-lit match ignited bedding in a second-floor apartment. And there were no smoke detectors in either the apartment where it started or the fourth-floor apartment where the four victims were found unconscious.
The fire started around 2 a.m. at 271 W. 126th St. Saturday morning; the tenant who was allegedly smoking at the time of the fire, and who hasn't been identified, first tried to put the fire out herself, and then fled the apartment, leaving the door open, which fanned the flames (similar to a fire which broke out in East Flatbush a few weeks ago).
Firefighters had the two-alarm fire under control within two hours, but they found found a man, 61; a woman, 43; a girl, 5, and a boy, 3—all unconscious in the fourth-floor apartment. The little girl was taken to the burn center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Well Cornell, and the other three were taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx for smoke inhalation treatment in the hyperbaric chamber there. FDNY Deputy Chief Peter Mulhall said they were all in critical condition, and a neighbor told the News, "They were in bad shape."
