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Four-Alarm Fire Destroys SoHo Building
By
Ben Muessig
Published Feb 19, 2010
Modified Feb 19, 2010
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By
Ben Muessig
Published Feb 19, 2010
Modified Feb 19, 2010
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A four-alarm fire ripped through a SoHo loft building early this morning, leaving three families homeless. The fire began just before 4 a.m. inside 82 Greene Street and spread quickly, causing a section of the second floor to collapse atop firefighters who were trying to put it out the blaze.
According to MyFoxNY, 168 firefighters responded to the fire, which erupted in a building near the corner of Spring Street that contains a retail location for the Swedish bed company Hastens. In fact, the furniture company's displays might have helped keep firefighters safe when the floor collapsed, FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Jack Mooney told NY1:
It was about a 20 to 30 foot section of a hung ceiling ... It was plaster attached to a wood frame, attached to the original ceiling, tremendously heavy. When it let go, it let go in one piece. It shook the building. The firefighters that were under it were not seriously injured because the shelving of the stock of the store that was in there. So they were kind of saved by being in the middle. They were able to back out and regroup.
No building residents or firefighters were injured, according to ABC. Tenants reportedly rang their neighbors' doorbells to alert each other of the fire before fleeing. "We actually went out, jumped the roof and went to another building and came down," said Allen Miller. The SoHo fire comes after several serious blazes this week, including a Bronx fire that left victims hanging out of the windows, and a Coney Island blaze that took an 11-year-old autistic boy's life. Reports have recently come across the police scanner of a high-rise fire on the eighth-floor of a building at the corner of Broadway and Waverly Place.
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