By Anthony Rifilato and Dana Williams
The fire started at about 8:00 a.m. on May 29, after a fire broke out in one of the co-op apartments on the first floor. "It started as an electrical fire, after a power supply to a fish tank's water pump overheated," said Baldwin Fire Chief Doug Wiedmann. "The fire was contained to the apartment, we were able to hold it before it spread."
Wiedmann said the fire was not deemed suspicious. Smoke from the fire, however, spread throughout the building, located on Grand Avenue, south of Ethel T. Kloberg Drive. Firefighters evacuated tenants, removing three through the building's first-floor windows because the hallways were filled with smoke, Wiedmann said.
"The smoke was in the hallway, and because we couldn't get them out through the normal hallway, we had to get them out through the windows," Wiedmann said. "We took out three people through windows and we evacuated everybody from the building."
About 50 Baldwin firefighters responded to the scene, with nearby units from Oceanside, Hempstead and Freeport assisting. The building is five stories, and is considered one of the largest buildings in town, Wiedmann said. "We had everybody out within a couple of minutes, after firefighters arrived."
Wiedmann said no one was injured, though some tenants were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation. Wiedmann also said one police officer was transported to a local hospital, where he was treated for smoke inhalation and later released.
Some tenants described an intense scene as the building - which has roughly 30 apartment units - became engulfed with smoke and firefighters removed tenants via a first-floor window.
"I have the apartment in back of the apartment where the fire started," said Eddy Epstein, a four-year resident of the co-op. "There was a lot of smoke in the building. The firefighters broke open windows in the front of the building and they took me out of one of the windows on a cherry picker."
Vanessa Lopez, also a tenant, said that residents waited for about three hours before they were able to go back into their apartments. Epstein said that his apartment sustained some damage.
"The water came into the rest of the building also because the fire had to be put out, so now my apartment and a couple of other apartments has carpeting damage from all of the water also," Epstein said.
Lopez described how the fire originated: "The guy heard a popping noise inside his apartment and then he saw flames right after, so that is apparently how it all started," Lopez said.
Many nearby businesses and residents said they saw firefighters rescuing tenants, breaking open windows and bringing them to safety as huge black plumes of smoke rose overhead. Two employees at the Baldwin True Value Hardware store across the street, who asked to be identified only as Pat and Diane, said that they saw firefighters taking an elderly man out of a window on the second floor after they broke open a few windows. "I saw some people evacuating through the fire escape and they took the elderly man out of the window on one of those bucket trucks," said Diane.
"The firefighters started to evacuate people and when they broke open the windows there was tons of smoke coming out of them," Pat added. "It looked like firefighters had the fire under control within an hour," said Debbie Rogers, an office manager at the Baldwin Animal Hospital across the street.
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