Daniel Maurer A fire broke out on the fourth floor of 218 East Sixth Street between Second Avenue and Taras Shevchenko Place around 8:14 p.m. tonight, a spokesperson for the F.D.N.Y. said. Two people – said to be tenants of apartment 10, where the spokesperson said the fire started due to a cooking oil inflammation – were taken to the hospital (at least one of them to Beth Israel) with minor injuries, one with a burn and the other with a laceration. The fire was under control by 8:57 p.m.
When The Local arrived on the scene around 8:45 p.m., smoke was billowing out of the building’s upper windows as firefighters broke glass and searched apartments.
A tenant of the building who said he lived across from the apartment where the blaze broke out, but did not want to give a name or age, said that the hallway was so thick with smoke that he used a rear fire escape, only to get trapped in the backyard.
“I had to bust a fence open and we jumped over and through it,” said the man while clutching his cat. The man and a fellow tenant in her early 20s complained that they didn’t hear fire alarms go off in the building, which is owned by Jakobson Properties. The company has come under fire itself this week, due to a Twitter campaign encouraging residents in its buildings to demand prompt repairs.
