By Christina Santucci
Firefighters battled a roaring blaze with 20-foot flames Monday night at a vacant Bayside home that was preparing for construction, neighbors said.
“I thought it was part of the TV program. It seemed as though it was coming out of the front of the house,” said Cecilia Cody, who lives across the street, describing how the Bravest worked to control the blaze. “Then the fire came out likes horns coming from both ends.”
Emergency responders had been called to the house, on 211th Street near 36th Avenue, a little after 10 p.m., an FDNY spokesman said.
About 60 Fire Department personnel and 12 units responded to the all-hands blaze, which took nearly an hour and a half to get under control, the spokesman said.
There was a partial collapse in the second floor of the two-story private house during the blaze, but no firefighters or residents were reported to be injured, according to fire officials.
Jim Cody, Cecilia’s husband, thought the water pressure from the firefighters’ hoses may have knocked off some of the second floor, which at one point was consumed by fire.
“The flames must have been 20 to 30 feet in the air,” Jim Cody said. “The fire was so intense. It was really roaring.”
Another neighbor, Bhanu Doshi, described numerous emergency responders at the scene.
“I was coming home and I saw the smoke first,” she said. “I hoped it wasn’t my house.”
Neighbors said the married couple who lived there had been in the process of renovating the roof. A permit for a second-floor extension in the front and rear of the home and a renovation of as enclosure was approved by the city Department of Buildings in October, as well as a permit for fence and excavation work, according to the DOB website.
Neighbors said the couple had bought the house recently and that no one was living in it at the time of the fire as the house was being readied for renovations.
“We are just happy no one was in there,” Cecilia Cody said.
Reach managing editor Christina Santucci by e-mail at timesledgerphotos@gmail.com by phone at 718-260-4589.
