Fire Wrecks 3 Jersey City Homes, Displaces Many Residents
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- A four-alarm fire on Sunday started in one home, than spread to two others.
More than a dozen people were displaced, CBS2's Dave Carlin reported.
A neighbor's video shows flames quickly devouring the back of 124 South St. in the Heights section of Jersey City, with winds whipping up a fire that started around 5 a.m. Sunday in a unit being renovated. It was practically bare with no one inside.
A different neighbor's camera shows an angle at the front of the three closely packed houses that the fire jumped to -- first the one next door and then one next to that.
Caught in the middle one was Yugal Pattni's family.
"The wind was blowing west, so from this house it jumped to my house and part of that house," Pattni said.
Pattni's video shows the 16-year-old walking through the rooms of a house no one can live in. He has his phone, and the clothes on his back, but almost all other belongings were ruined, as his family relocated to a hotel, arranged for them by the American Red Cross.
Pattni said he knows he's lucky to be alive.
"I was sleeping, My mom panicked. She screamed my name," Pattni said. "My mom actually had to knock on my door because my door was locked, so she basically saved me."
"My son, without him I cannot get out from my house. He is my life, too," Jagrupi Pattni added.
As a result of the blaze three structures will be boarded up and five families are now to find new places to live, Carlin reported.
Seventeen people were displaced and getting Red Cross assistance include one teenager who was sleeping in a top-floor bedroom in the third house to burn.
She had only a few seconds to grab what she could and get out.
"A few clothes and money, that's basically it," she said.
By late afternoon fire investigators were done inside the charred inside of the room where the fire started. CBS2 has learned the official cause won't be released for several days.
"The house was being renovated so maybe there something with the electrical," the teen girl said.
Firefighters were praised by members of the community for seeing to it everyone escaped an overwhelming wall of fire with their lives.
