Several Families Displaced After Early-Morning Fire Destroys Jersey City Homes
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Several Jersey City families are scrambling to find a new place to live after an early morning fire destroyed their homes.
"I don't have a home. I don't have a home," fire victim Gladys Stanley told CBS 2's Weijia Jiang.
Stanley who is pregnant and due to give birth in one week worries her baby will not have a home either.
The fire began at around 5:30 a.m. Monday and tore through the row house home where Stanley lives with her husband and in-laws.
"My things are all in the house. I already finished shopping for the baby. I don't know what to do. I'm stressed," Stanley told Jiang.
The fire started in a house on 13 Bergen Ave. and quickly spread to numbers 15 and 17 -- in part because the buildings are all connected, investigators said.
The closest fire station is just a few doors away, but their truck with water was on another call, Jiang reported.
However, some of the fire victims criticized the Fire Department's response time.
A spokesman for the department said it took three minutes for crews from a different station to arrive.
Kevin Cleveland got out with nothing but a folder of receipts belonging to items that no longer exist. "I want to cry. I wish I could crawl into a cave, or pray this is a bad dream and I'll wake up soon."
"It hasn't sunk in yet. I'm just glad we all got out alive," said Geraldine Stanley.
No one was seriously injured in the blaze.
Two firefighters and two victims were treated for minor injuries.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
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