Apartment Building, Residential Binghamton, NY – Apartment fire contained to one unit with help from sprinkler system October 26, 2016 viking210 Firefighters spent the evening on the scene of an apartment fire at 58 Park Avenue in Binghamton. According to the Binghamton Fire Department, apartment 1A caught fire. BFD officials say the fire damage was contained to apartment 1A, which they say now needs extensive renovations. BFD says the fire sprinkler in the apartment hallway was activated, but the fire was contained to apartment 1A. Smoke, however, moved up the stairwell to both the second and third floors. A woman and child were pulled out of an apartment window on the third floor because smoke moved to the third floor, trapping the mother and her son in apartment 3A behind a cloud of thick smoke. “What I heard was the guy on the first floor, he was leaving the building and the fire was going on in his apartment,” said apartment 3A resident and mother Lydia Lopez. With the tenant from 1-A already out of the building, it was up to Lopez’s downstairs neighbor on the second floor to alert other residents to the fire on the first floor. “She said ‘tell everybody get out!’ and he just got out, he didn’t tell nobody get out. So by the time I could get out, the house in 3-A was already flooded in smoke and I couldn’t get out with my son. They had to take me out the window from the back,” Lopez continued. “The tower took a ladder around to the backside of the building, put it up to the third floor, and rescued the mother and her baby from the third floor,” said BFD Assistant Fire Chief Mark Whalen. The thick smoke made it almost impossible to see the walls of apartment 3-A and Lopez didn’t want to take her son through the smoke. Chief Whalen says firefighters arrived 2 minutes after the 9-1-1 call, and had her out of the apartment moments after arriving. She tells 12 News that after being surprised by smoke billowing into their apartment, she’s lucky to be alive. “I’m happy they got here on time, cuz other times some people are not lucky to get out alive, so we got out safe and sound, thanks to the fire department,” Lopez said. Asst. Chief Whalen says the apartment complex was turned back over to the owner and the owner will decide whether or not tenants will be allowed back in before repairs are made. The exact cause of the fire is still under investigation.
