Firefighters Battle 3-Alarm Fire in New Rochelle

NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Firefighters from New Rochelle and Yonkers are battling a tenacious, heavy fire in a 6-story apartment building at 90 Union Street in New Rochelle in bitter cold. Temperatures are in the low 20s with 10-15 mph winds making it feel like 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The New Rochelle Fire Department got a call about 1 pm for an electrical fire. The fire was in a 6th floor apartment towards the rear but got up in the cockloft and spread from there. The roof later collapsed.

40-50 people were evacuated. The Red Cross was on scene.

A bus was called to shelter 20 residents.

No injuries were reported.

New Rochelle Fire Chief Andrew Sandor (see video below):

About one o’Clock we got a call for a possible electrical fire here at 90 Union Street. When crews arrived it was already involved in an apartment on the sixth floor. We had smoke coming out of the cockloft vents already when we got here, that told it was pretty advanced.

As you can see we’re still fighting it four hours later.

In a cockloft fire there’s a space in between the roof of the building and the top floor and that goes throughout the building. What that is, it’s like a ventilation tank for heating and cooling stuff, all old buildings have it. Unfortunately when the fire gets up in there it can just take off and go right across the building.

What we did, we actually made a trench cut across the roof and we at least held the fire to this one wing right here and kept it out of the other two wings, the other guys did a good job on that, very good job.

And we’re trying to hit it right now. The roof has collapsed already and once the roof collapses there’s voids up there and it’s hard to get in and actually attack the fire with a handline.

Right now we’re having success as you can see with faster streams on the windows and we’re making some headway.

There was a number of people throughout the building, they all got out and of the building, we’re thinking 40 to 50 people were evacuatedz

As you can see we have Red Cross people on scene and a BeeLine bus down the street, a place for them to see. The building next door, 164 Church, offered the use of their community room, you know for folks to hang out.

Thank goodness no civilian or firefighter injuries so far.

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