Four people were left fighting for their lives Friday as a raging inferno raced through an apartment complex in the Bronx — as the resident who first called 911 told The Post how she desperately tried to rescue her next-door neighbor.
The three-alarm fire broke out on the top floor of a six-story apartment building in the 2300 block of Holland Avenue in the Allerton section of the Bronx just after 6 a.m., according to the FDNY.
The flames quickly spread through the top of the building, drawing a massive FDNY response within minutes, with nearly 140 firefighters taking close to an hour and a half to get it under control.
One tenant was hospitalized with critical injuries while three others suffered serious life-threatening injuries, officials said. A fifth person escaped with minor injuries, officials said.
The apartment building’s superintendent told The Post that the badly injured victim was naked when he was carried down to the lobby by first responders, who immediately went to work trying to revive him by doing chest compressions, as seen in distressing photos taken at the scene.
Cynthia Aikens, 63, who lives in the apartment next to the one where the fire ignited, told The Post that she was watching television over a cup of coffee when she smelled smoke and heard a fire alarm go off.
“I was the first one to call the fire department as soon as I saw the smoke,” Aikens said.
The woman, who walks with a cane, dashed outside her apartment as quickly as she could and began banging on the door of her next-door neighbor in unit 6A and screaming, because she said she could hear someone inside.
“I was trying to get someone to say something,” Aikenes recounted. “I don’t hear nothing and I touched the door and the door was hot.”
The woman then returned to her apartment to alert her roommate. By then, she said the smoke was so black and thick that she could not see anything.
After hastily getting dressed, Aikens and her pal rushed to the elevator to make their escape.
“It was difficult breathing and we couldn’t see,” she said. “It was very scary, very horrible. I just wouldn’t wish that on nobody.”
Aikenes’ neighbor was eventually rescued from his fire-engulfed apartment, having suffered burns to the back of his head and his left shoulder.
It took about 138 firefighters nearly one-and-a-half hours to get the blaze under control. No FDNY personnel were injured.
Aikens said the fire ravaged her apartment where she had lived for the past 13 years, destroying nearly all of her possessions.
“All I have is what I have on my body,” she said, pointing to her red sweat suit. “This is it.”
The cause of the fire is being investigated.
