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Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Three people are dead in the wake of three fires in the Bronx, N.Y., the Fire Department of New York reported. A pair of fires three blocks apart Saturday killed two people four hours apart, officials reported Sunday, and the third blaze erupted Friday which took the life of the third person.
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A two-alarm blaze broke out about 8:15 p.m. Saturday on the second floor of a five story building on Elder Avenue near Westchester Avenue, a FDNY spokesman said. Firefighters brought that fire under control in about 50 minutes, the department said.
Rescuers found a woman inside the building and transported her to Jacobi Medical Center where she died, police said. Her name and age were not released.
Neighbors said some residents tried to use the emergency escape on the outside of the building, but reported the drop down ladder was stuck. One resident rushed out barefoot with her parents and two sisters and said her father managed to shake the ladder loose but injured himself in the process.
"It was bad. My dad got hurt," the woman said.
Another witness described residents passing their children down to people on the ground below, as workers from a nearby 24-hour grocery ran to the scene to help.
"They came with a ladder to help people down," the neighbor said of the workers.
Willy Alvarez, 45, heard his wife yelling up to him in their fourth floor apartment from the street. That's when he looked out the window to see smoke billowing out of the window's across the building's courtyard and fled the building.
"That's when I knew it was serious," he said.
Just over four hours later, a fire erupted on Colgate Avenue near Westchester Avenue -- only about a quarter-mile away.
That fire spread to several buildings and vehicles. When firefighters extinguished that blaze they found a 50-year-old man who was also taken to Jacobi Medical Center where he died, police said.
Drea Williamson lived in a front-facing apartment in the building and works a graveyard shift at Panera Bread inside the Montefiore Medical Center in Manhattan. She said her landlord called her about 1 a.m. to report the blaze.
'We lost everything!' she recalls the landlord telling her. The man who died in the fire lived adjacent to Williamson in the rear-facing basement apartment.
"That man just moved into that apartment," Williamson said. "He just moved in two days ago. That is tragic. I feel bad," she said. "That man had a family."
Williamson said she did not know the man well yet, but described him as a kind and quiet man.
"He was like me. He minded his own business. I didn't hear any loud music. He just got there. He was nice," she continued.
Williamson moved into the apartment in September 2021 and said she found a broken heating system, faulty electrical wiring and plumbing that backed up when it rained.
She said she was told by the city that the apartment building had been illegally subdivided and she added that the fire came as no surprise to her. She wants the city and building's owners to follow up.
"If it wasn't for the fire, it was going to go down regardless. I don't know how it started but I feel like it needs to be investigated," Williamson, who is now looking for a place to live, said.
"I lost everything. I only went outside with the clothes on my back," she said. "I want to find my cats. I'm going to look for my cats again today. Wherever I'm going to be placed, I would like my cats to come with me. ... I hope to find them alive.
Two police officers suffered minor smoke inhalation in that blaze.
There was a lone candle outside a building at 197th Street and Pond Place in Bedford Park Sunday where firefighters responded to a blaze in the Bronx about 4 p.m. Friday that took the life of another New Yorker. This one occurred on the second floor of the six-story building.
Rescuers transported Brett Teply to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he later died, an FDNY spokesman said.
"He just had his birthday 11 days before. His birthday was Dec. 18," his sister Marisa Teply told the New York Daily News.
"He just turned 56. He didn't care, he didn't think about numbers. He was a sweet guy, he was an optimistic guy. He was not a negative person."
"I was heartbroken when we lost him," she added.
Neighbors said the building's superintendent tried to evacuate the building as quickly as possible, but Tepley fell victim to the smoke, his sister said.
A report by the New York City Comptroller's office says between the winters of 2017 and 2021 there were a total of 814,542 heat complaints made by tenants living in 70,766 individual, privately owned buildings, the most recent figures available, and blamed inadequate maintenance by building owners and operators.
The report says the complaints are not distributed evenly across the city, "but concentrated in the Northwest and South Bronx, Central Brooklyn and, Northern Manhattan -- all neighborhoods in which most residents are people of color."
It also pointed out that while the residents in these buildings are experiencing a disproportionately high number of heat-related complaints due to a lack of proper maintenance, the property values are increasing at the same time.
"In a cruel irony, this lack of basic building maintenance is occurring as buildings in these communities are sold for increasingly high prices," the report said.
"Instead of improved living conditions under new ownership, existing tenants often simultaneously face decreased services and the threat of rising rents or eviction.
"Stronger code enforcement, in addition to tenant protections, is necessary to compel landlords, especially those with low-income, immigrant, and tenants of color, to treat the properties they own not just as an investment vehicle, but as people's homes."
The cause of all three fires remains under investigation.
