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Woman burned inside her home

By Chris Fuchs

The officials said the woman, Estelle M. Knox, 67, was taken to Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx with a police escort. Initially, the Fire Department had requested that a helicopter land at a nearby park to airlift Knox to the Burn Unit of Cornell Weill Hospital in Manhattan. That request, however, was canceled shortly after.

The fire broke out just after 1:30 p.m Sunday at 230-06 145th Ave., neighbors and officials said. A spokesman for the Fire Department, Firefighter Mike Prendergast, said it took 65 firefighters about a half hour to bring the blaze under control.

The officials said the fire appeared to have started in a back room of the two-story frame house, possibly from a lighted cigarette, where Knox lives.

But Bernard Chong, a next-door neighbor, said he smelled gas when he came back from work around 3 a.m. Sunday morning. Chong said he called KeySpan later that morning, and that after an investigation, they told him that there was a high level of carbon monoxide outside his house.

“I smelled something like smoke, but I didn't see smoke,” Chong said. “So then I went to sleep and laid down, and then someone was banging out side – bam, bam. I said, 'What the hell is that?” I thought someone was in my back yard.”

A spokesman for KeySpan, Bob Mahony, said that an emergency unit was dispatched to the block early that morning after a neighbor called to complain about a strong odor of gas.

“We arrived and did a full check for odors that would reveal a presence of carbon monoxide,” Mahoney said. “There was no evidence of a gas leak or carbon monoxide.”

Fire companies remained on the scene to shovel out clothes and papers from the front and back windows of the house, dumping them in the front and back yards. Knox's son, who was in the house when the fire broke out, cradled a singed strong box containing important documents as he and his sister, Lisa, conversed. A few minutes later, a firefighter handed him his wallet, which, except for a wad of charred money, was intact.