A man was killed in a Manhattan apartment fire on Saturday morning, according to the FDNY, in one of several fires that erupted overnight and into the morning across the city.
Firefighters and cops arrived at the 12-story apartment building on W. 71st St. near Columbus Ave. on the Upper West Side at around 7:30 a.m. and discovered the blaze on the 10th floor, FDNY officials said.
First responders found 78-year-old William Green unconscious and unresponsive, according to police. Medics pronounced Green dead at the scene.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
A 78-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene after a fire broke out inside his 10th-floor apartment on W. 71st St. in Manhattan on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024.
By around 8 a.m., the roughly 80 responding firefighters brought the flames under control, FDNY officials said.
Fire marshals were still working to determine the cause of the blaze on Saturday afternoon and no arrests had been made, cops said.
The building, Hargrave House, is a moderate-income residence for people over age 62. Residents have access to state-funded social services.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
Fire marshals were working to determine the cause of the deadly blaze at 111 W. 71st St. in Manhattan on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024.
Speaking later Saturday night, a woman who has lived at the building for three years and did not share her name, said a friend of hers there had seen the victim “go down, down, down” over the years, in terms of his physical condition.
“There could have been other fatalities,” she said, with concern. “I live two floors above, so I wasn’t affected by it. I didn’t even know about it because I didn’t work today, so I was in. It wasn’t till 3 o’clock I found out what happened.
“I think that perhaps this man was very old and maybe shouldn’t have been in a home like this,” she offered, saying he might have needed to be in a building with a greater level of assisted-living services.
Green’s son, who lives in upper Manhattan, responded to a buzz on his apartment intercom Saturday evening, but said through its speaker that he didn’t want to talk.
Earlier Saturday morning, firefighters extinguished four other blazes in Queens and the Bronx.
One person was injured in an apartment building fire that broke out at around 2:40 a.m. on 118th Ave. near 153rd St. in South Jamaica.
Sixty responding firefighters battled the flames, bringing them under control by about 3:40 a.m. Medics rushed the injured person to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, an FDNY spokesperson said.
Firefighters also extinguished fires at a Whitestone house, an Astoria shoe store and a Throgs Neck apartment overnight. No injuries were reported.
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