Fire at illegally converted home with 10-year vacate order!

From the NY Post:

Three Queens residents’ lives were saved in an “amazing rescue” by firefighters who pulled them to safety through the window of an illegal attic apartment during a blaze Sunday, fire officials said.

“They would all have been dead,” FDNY Batallion Chief Robert Bohack Jr., said.

Firefighters were called to the scene at 101-51 107th St. in Richmond Hill around 7:45 a.m. for a fire that started on the second floor of what was legally considered a two-story building.

But first responders quickly realized residents were being illegally housed in the attic and would need to be rescued, an FDNY spokesman said.

Smoke eaters battled the flames from inside, by traveling up the interior stairs, and from the rear of the home, where firefighters used a ladder to access the attic through a small window.

Buildings department inspectors determined the two-family home had been illegally converted into a five-family structure, with additional apartments in the cellar of the building, a DOB spokesman said. Officials immediately issued a vacate order due to the heavy damage throughout the building.

When confronted at the scene, a man identified as the building’s owner would not answer questions about the illegal conversion.

Perhaps he's mum because there's been a vacate order on the house for 10 years!

F*cked up in Flushing

This house at 30-35 150th Street in Flushing is kind of cute, eh? Well don't get too attached to it.

This is what the homeowner/architect applied to do to it.

This is what they actually did to it.

So tell me, how is a project that was audited and found to be non-compliant, with a "notice to revoke letter" sent out in June, allowed to continue into September - a partial demolition - with no construction fence and without the proper permits?

Squatter found dead inside burnt home

From the Forum:

Firefighters last week discovered the burned body of an unidentified man inside an abandoned Richmond Hill house after extinguishing an early-morning inferno that destroyed the property, according to city Fire Department officials and published reports.

The man—believed to be a squatter, according to a New York Daily News report—was found dead in the attic. The cause of last Wednesday’s blaze that gutted what was left of the building on the corner Lefferts Boulevard and 95th Avenue was deemed suspicious.

City Department of Buildings records shows nine complaints filed on the property, including one from last August which states that a neighbor had indicated that the house “is leaning and looks unstable,” and “may be abandoned and harboring squatters.”

Woodhaven wants housing left alone

From The Forum:

Perhaps the most ambitious project of his mayoralty, Hizzoner Bill de Blasio’s 10-year, five-borough affordable housing plan is not without its critics.

Just ask some residents of Woodhaven.

“It’s a cheap way for the city to provide ‘affordable housing,’” said Sherman Kane at last Thursday’s meeting of the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association. “It costs the city nothing. We, as middle-class homeowners, would be providing the solution.”

In late July, the WRBA reached out to the mayor’s office via a letter expressing their concerns and requesting more information, and has even circulated a petition decrying the $41 billion project. The civic has not received a response.

“We just wanted to be more educated on what [de Blasio] is trying to do,” said WRBA President Martin Colberg last week.

Colberg noted that one of the main concerns is zoning, and how the plan will involve green-lighting basement and attic apartments. Published reports indicate that de Blasio is keen on converting previously illegal basement and cellar dwellings.

“We worked hard to keep the zoning the way it is, to keep the character the way it is,” he said. “Just shoving people into a basement or attic is not the answer.”

Colberg said the mayor’s sweeping response cannot come at the expense of a community’s character and the lives therein.

“We’re talking about safety—of the NYPD, of the FDNY, if they have to go into the [converted] house, the safety of neighbors,” Colberg posited. “Whether you’re a renter or a homeowner, you’re going to be affected by this.”

Man dies in house without smoke alarms after fire

From the Daily News:

A deadly blaze that ripped through a two-story home in Queens Sunday killed one person and injured another, officials said.

The fire started in the cellar of a home on Springfield Blvd. in Queens Village around 2 p.m. and quickly spread up the first-floor staircase, fire officials said.

Fire officials don’t know yet what sparked the blaze but said there were no working smoke detectors in the home.

Raccoons in the attic

From the Daily News:

THE RACCOONS tormenting a Queens family are still living in their attic — despite one of the brood having fallen through the bedroom ceiling.

Patricia Gilbert, 48, said the seven unwelcome critters were in their nesting place at her Springfield Gardens house Saturday — one day after a raccoon terrified her family and got pepper-sprayed by a cop.

“They didn’t go anywhere,” said Gilbert.

The raccoons rummage for scraps during the night, and typically come home around 5 a.m.

“When they come in to go to bed that's when they make the noise,” said Gilbert.

The landlord of her home still hadn’t repaired the hole in the ceiling, Gilbert added.