FIRE FIGHTERS RESPOND to a fire which broke out on the 4th floor of a residential building located at 323 East Gun Hill Road in Norwood on Saturday morning, July 15, 2023. Video courtesy of the Citizens’ App.

FDNY officials said nobody was injured after a fire broke out on the 4th floor of a residential building in Norwood shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, July 15, though one neighbor told us he saw some residents who were bandaged exiting the building during the incident.

 

An FDNY spokesperson said the department received a call for reports of smoke on the 4th floor at 323 East Gun Hill Road, a 6-story dwelling, at 00:05 a.m. on Saturday. He said the fire was brought under control at 00:33 a.m. and there were no injuries. We asked if the apartment number could be confirmed. We did not receive an immediate response.

Photos of the building taken on Saturday afternoon, July 15, showed some windows on the 4th floor at the corner of the building (by Hull Avenue) were either broken or boarded up.

 

We spoke to some residents of the building to ask what they knew of what happened. Speaking in Spanish, one 4th floor female resident told us, “We were sleeping. It was late into the night. We heard the alarm go off, saw the smoke and that’s it. I saw people going out.”

 

Asked if she also evacuated the building, the resident said, “We stayed here because the firefighters said we could because they were resolving the issue.”

 

Asked if she knew which apartment the fire broke out on, she said she wasn’t sure and that she had been worried, and spent most of the time looking out the window of her kitchen down onto the street and therefore didn’t notice which apartment was on fire. She added that the firefighters came once to her door and so she didn’t have a chance to ask.

 

Asked how long the incident lasted, she said, “Very fast, under half an hour.” We asked how she felt overall about the incident. She said, “It’s a little frightening [and so late at night too],” she said. “Thanks be to God it has passed.” We asked if she had children and she said she had not.

We also spoke to a male resident on the third floor. He said he didn’t really know much about what happened because he said most people in the building speak Spanish but he does not, and therefore it was difficult to find out from neighbors.

 

“My dog was barking a lot,” he said. “He would not stop, and he don’t do that. He’s quiet so I thought it would be fine because the people who were leaving, they didn’t look too worried, but it was a commotion so when I heard glass breaking and stuff, that’s when I said, ‘Let’s just get outside’.”

 

Asked where in the building he heard the glass breaking, he said over him but not directly over his apartment. He said he thought the fire was on the fourth floor. “I saw one person bandaged up. I don’t know from the fire or not.”

 

Asked to describe the person, he said it was an older man. “Then, I believe it was another older man that was in the fire but I didn’t see anything else. I came back in from downstairs because nobody stopped me from coming in. So, it has been fine since.”

 

Asked if the alarm went off, he said, “Yeah, I heard the alarm before I heard my dog but I didn’t hear anybody else. That’s why I  wasn’t worried at first. But, I know the officers would let me know or everybody know to get out [if needed] but again, once the glass was breaking, I’m like, ‘Let’s get out and see what’s going on’.”

The resident said he went downstairs and took his dog with him. “My friends was here. They were both worried ’cause they had been asleep. Later, we were playing a game and they were asleep and my dog was barking and I woke them up and then, somebody else knocked on the door and said, ‘Let’s go’.”

 

We spoke to another person who declined to be identified and who said, in Spanish, that they believe the apartment where the fire broke out is occupied by the people who run “Rosario Family Cigars,” located on the ground floor of the building on East Gun Hill Road.

 

Norwood News attempted to speak to the people working inside the Cigar store later on Saturday about the fire but they declined to be interviewed.

We attempted to speak to other residents of the building but they were either unavailable, were domestic employees who were just working in some of the apartments in the building and did not live there, or said they had not been home when the fire broke out.

 

We asked other residents in the area if they had witnessed the fire. Speaking in Spanish, another local female resident, who said she lived at nearby 3371 Decatur Avenue on the corner of East Gun Hill Road, said the fire alarm in her building had gone off around 10 or 11 p.m. on Friday night, July 14, about an hour or so before the East Gun Hill Road fire broke out.

 

She said the alarm stopped shortly afterwards and she heard nothing more about it. She added that she did not witness the fire at 323 East Gun Hill Road.

 

An employee who had been working on the opposite side of East Gun Hill Road to where the fire broke out at the time it occurred was hesitant to be interviewed at first as he said he didn’t speak English very well.

 

He later told us, “I was standing here and I saw the ambulances,” he said. Asked how many, the man said, “A lot.” He continued, “I see the fire is coming.” Asked if she saw flames or just smoke, he said, “Yeah, the fire.. it’s coming. It’s coming out the window.”

 

Many other people we spoke to were unaware there had been a fire the previous evening.

 

Police were later seen on Saturday afternoon patrolling the area. The local businesses appeared to all be open, as normal.

As reported, FDNY trucks were also called to respond to an electrical incident at Tracey Towers on the Norwood-Bedford Park border later on Saturday morning, July 15.

 

As also reported, a fire broke out in an e-bike store in Norwood on June 7. New laws have been introduced at a federal, City and State level to address fire safety prevention and the hazards of lithium-ion batteries and e-bikes.

 

Click here for details of a federal recall of 53,000 scooters due to a fire hazard involving the deaths of two children.

 

*David Greene contributed to this story.