A number of residents were on the street outside the building when we spoke to them. We spoke to “Arimendey.” Speaking in Spanish, he said, “I was out and someone told me there was an issue in our building and when I got back, I saw the fire. I opened the apartment door, looked around, I saw nothing and I just exited via the fire escape, and now I’m just here waiting. I don’t know what happened. It seems a little girl was injured. I think they got her out.”

 

Another male resident on the fourth floor who declined to be identified, said, “To be honest, I really don’t know [what happened]. I was in the living room when it happened. I saw a bunch of smoke coming out. At first, I was reluctant, and then somebody knocked on my door, and I was like, ‘Fire! Fire!’ I opened the door and I saw a bunch of smoke, and my mind just went blank. I put a sweater on, and then I just started running out.”

 

We asked the resident if it was hard to exit through the smoke. “It wasn’t really that hard, since it wasn’t like that big, but it could be barely seen,” he said. “But I ran fully fast and I got out thankfully.” He added that he thought the fire started on the third floor. Asked if he was on his own in the apartment, he said, “Yeah, I was on my own.” Asked if there were a lot of elderly people in the building, he said there were some and other were helping them get out. He also heard an alarm go off. He said he only saw flames once he was outside.

After five people were injured following a residental fire, as reported, at 3514 Rochambeau Avenue by Bainbridge Avenue and East Gun Hill Road in Norwood on Friday, Feb. 14, residents have been giving their reaction to the scary incident.

 

Asked if she could say what happened, one young woman named Sahiam who was on the second floor said, “Well, honestly, I don’t really know what happened and how the fire started. I’m on this side of the building. There’s two sides. My mom, she was near our window in her room, and we heard yelling. We heard screaming, and then she was like, ‘Look out the window! What’s happening?’ And I put my head out, and there were people, my neighbors, were screaming, right?”

 

Sahiam continued, “And then she’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a fire! There’s a fire! And then they were telling us to come down, and I think there was a little girl trapped inside the apartment, I’m not sure, but, yeah, it was scary.” She said she saw the young child being taken away while she, herself, was on FaceTime with her own dad. Asked if she thought everybody in the building was evacuated, Sahiam said, “Oh, I hope they were, right?” Asked if the fire alarm went off, she said, “Yeah. I heard all the alarms were going off. I saw my neighbors. They were getting some stuff from their apartment.”

 

Asked if there was a lot of smoke inside when she was trying to get down, she said there was. “My mom, she has breathing problems, lung issues, and she couldn’t breathe, So, she wasn’t wearing a mask.” Asked if maybe her mom was able to get some oxygen later from EMS, she said she didn’t realize that was an option, adding, “I think they’re focused on this side [of the building].

 

Sahiam continued, “It’s so scary, though, because you see that building started burning, I’m guessing. That’s like the third floor, right? And then the other two started as well. It’s so sad. I hope everyone’s okay. You lose everything in a fire, everything, and you never know when they’re gonna happen.”

We spoke to Joel at the scene who said he had been living in he building for about 15 years. He said, “I was in my apartment. I was sleeping. I heard a lot of noise in the street, people screaming, and when I looked out the window….I live on the third floor….when I look out the window of my apartment, I see a lot of people, fire department. I put my clothes on and get out. When I get out, I see a lot of people screaming, crying, you know?” Asked how many people he saw crying, he said about ten, including one woman of about 60 who was very upset. He said they were taken to he hospital.

 

Asked if he saw people injured, Joel went on to say and gestured indicating that he saw someone with an injured leg. Asked more about it, he said, “He got out [of] his apartment. He was running. They have no shoes. He got caught in the glass because no shoes, no nothing. The ambulance took him; that’s what happened.” Asked if he, himself, was okay, Joel said, ‘I’m just waiting. I got to go to work. So I’m waiting.” Asked if he had to go back inside before he went to work, he said, “Yeah, everything. My door is open.”

 

We asked Joel if he had a family and he said he had  but they weren’t at home when the fire broke out. He said his family did not yet even know about the fire. He said he was just waiting to take a shower and had called his employer to let them know about the fire. We mentioned that it was fortunate that Montefiore hospital was just one block away from the fire. He said, “That’s why I don’t want to move because the hospital is right there.”

 

A middle-aged woman who appeared to be the matriarch of a Spanish-speaking family, who were also outside on the street shivering in the cold and who declined to be identified looked worried and when asked about the fire, only said they were worried about documents in their apartment.

 

We spoke to two other younger women standing on the street who said they were just walking back from the park when they saw all the commotion. “We were coming from the park and couldn’t get down the block.” Asked if they knew their neighbors, one of the women said, “No, not in this building,” We mentioned that some people had said there was an injured little girl and asked if they had seen her. “No, no, but I did see her mom running. She looked pretty worried.”

Asked if the mom had gone in the ambulance with her daughter, the woman said, “I guess. Didn’t really see, I just saw her running through the crowd like really, you know, worried.” Asked if the mom was with the stretcher that her daughter was on, she said yes, she was with her.

 

Finally, another young man called Vincent who shared some videos of the fire with us, was asked what happened and he said, “I live in the area, so I’m just walking by, heading home, and I saw a crowd gathered, and I was a bit confused, and then I saw just basically a pillar of fire, and that’s the extent of it. I did speak with some folks. I did overhear some people next to me speaking, and some of them actually lived in the apartment, which caught on fire.”

 

He added, “So fortunately, they were able to get out and grab some of the essentials, like their passport.”

 

Another woman who declined to be identified and who lived in a nearby building said she evacuated also. Asked if she smelled the smoke in her apartment, she said, “Yeah, my son called me. I was on the train and I had to run home.”