By Kerry Burke, Roni Jacobson
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — At least one person died in a fire that tore through an apartment building in Manhattan’s Upper East Side Monday night, police said.
The blaze broke out around 8 p.m. in an apartment building on E. 81st St. near York Ave.
“We had a heavy, heavy body of fire,” Assistant Fire Chief Thomas Currao said at a press briefing. “We had very, very quick work by members of the FDNY,” he said.
The fire started on the fifth floor, before traveling down to the fourth floor and up to the sixth, Currao said.
Firefighters found the victim collapsed outside an apartment on the fifth-floor hallway “overcome with smoke,” Currao said. “The victim was found in a hallway area and identified right away.”
Most of the building’s 23 units are damaged, he added: “We had to pull apart walls.”
Residents gathered outside the building shivered in the cold, despite the still smoldering fire.
Second-floor resident Matthew Myers, 31, rushed out of the building without a shirt to escape the flames.
“I smelled smoke, and people were banging on the door, screaming, ‘Fire, fire, fire!’ ” he told the Daily News. “I ran outside and it was a blaze on the fifth floor. It blew out the windows. I was worried for the rest of the building.”
”You go through all the emotions,” Myers said. “The blaze was coming out of the windows. It hadn’t quite reached the roof yet. I’m worried about tonight, tomorrow, and the next day.”
”Thank God for the first responders,” he told The News.
Another building resident, Bridgett McCloud, 31, who was wrapped in a Red Cross blanket, recounted that “at first I thought, what was that smell?”
“And then I started banging on all the doors to tell people to get out. I heard someone screaming, ‘Fire, fire, fire!’” she said, “When I got outside it was all smoke, and then the flames burst through the windows. It was crazy. It went from the fifth floor to the sixth.”
Six firefighters were treated for minor injuries, Currao said.
Cops said that as of 9 p.m., firefighters had the blaze under control.
The identity of the man who died in the fire was not immediately released. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
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