April 17, 2023 FDNY firefighters said they were confronted by clutter in the Queens house which made their search difficult.
By John Annese Source New York Daily News (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
An 82-year-old man died after a raging blaze broke out in his cluttered Queens house Sunday morning, officials said.
The fire started about 5:40 a.m. in the two-story house on 36th Ave. near 218th St. in Bayside and quickly grew to three alarms.
Firefighters found the home’s owner dead in a rear bathroom on the second floor, FDNY Battalion Chief Brian Deery said.
The clutter complicated the response, Deery said.
“When you go inside, obviously, it’s lights-out conditions. When you have a heavy fire condition like that, there’s a lot of thick black smoke,” he said. “You have a clutter condition where you’re going in, you’re searching and you’re bouncing into things. It’s hard to maneuver and search so it kind of delays the search.”
Firefighters brought the blaze under control just after 7:20 a.m. The cause remains under investigation, Deery said.
The victim’s name was not immediately released.