by Joe Hirsch
news@huntspointexpress.com
Photo by Joe Hirsch
Passersby stop to look at the skeletal remains of stores destroyed by a devastating fire on Southern Boulevard and 167th Street on Wednesday, Nov. 19. The three-alarm blaze, which broke out in a drycleaners shortly after 4 p.m., claimed seven stores and killed dozens of animals in a pet store.
A fire raged through the shopping district on Southern Boulevard between 167th Street and Westchester Avenue in the late afternoon of Wednesday, November 19, destroying seven stores. The blaze sent clouds of smoke across the encroaching twilight in Hunts Point, Longwood and Morrisania, halting service on the elevated 2 and 5 trains that run in front of the now-gutted shops. Firefighters from Engine Company 82/Ladder Company 31 on Intervale Avenue fought the inferno until evening. No employees from the stores were injured, but seven firefighters were treated for minor injuries.
As a result of the flames and subsequent water damage, the stores will have to be demolished. Residents of the adjacent residential building were evacuated until the flames were completely doused well after 9 p.m.
“It was too smoky to see anything,” said Chris Roman, 18, smoking a cigarette in front of 1111 Southern Boulevard, as he surveyed the ruins next door. Roman and the rest of his family were among those ordered by firefighters to close their windows and stand in the street while the brigade did its work.
Roman was surprised when he heard the flames had begun in the dry cleaner.
“They were doing construction on the second floor of the pet shop,” he said, recalling there had been welders working at Amanda’s Pet Center recently. “I thought it was the pet shop, for sure.”
“There’s a macaw in a cage, still in there,” Roman said. The bird and scores of other animals perished, although firefighters managed to rescue a few, said Lieutenant Glenn Sheridan.
The manager of a nearby supply store noticed smoke entering through the front door some time after 4 p.m.
“All of a sudden I have to go outside and I saw the fire service cars,” said Abdul Karim, a Gambian shopkeeper at Ceesay’s Linen and Houseware Store, a few doors down from the damaged buildings.
“What made it worse, you can’t see nothing,” Karim recalled of the scene when he fled his store.
“They did a good job yesterday,” he said, adding that he had to see a doctor for chest pain that resulted from the smoke. “It could have been worse.”
Con Edison has been shutting off the water and electricity, before the debris can be removed and the demolition begins, according to Lieutenant Sheridan.