A man and a woman were killed when a raging house fire ripped through a three-story building in Brooklyn early Monday, officials said.
The blaze erupted around 1:35 a.m. at 30 Richardson Street in Williamsburg, a block from McCarren Park, authorities said.
The fire quickly grew to a five-alarm blaze as about 200 fire fighters rushed to put out the flames for nearly three hours. Firefighters found the male victim hours after finding the woman on the second floor, officials said. Neither of them have been identified.
“It was a difficult fire to get under control. There was a heavy volume of fire on the upper floors,” said FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Wayne Cartwright.
The blaze started on the first floor or in the basement and then quickly spread, Cartwright said.
Some neighbors said that they heard a loud explosion shortly after the fire broke out in the building between Lorimer Street and Union Avenue.
Theresa Vibberts, 31, was inside her third floor apartment when she woke to the sound of shattering windows in her kitchen.
“I thought someone was breaking in maybe or something but I was wearing a sleep mask and I could actually see the flames through the sleep mask, they were that bright,” said Vibberts.
“I had ear plugs in too but I heard my neighbor banging on the door screaming and I got down on the floor below the smoke and crawled over to the door.”
On the other side of her door was her neighbor Sami Saba who told her to get out of the building.
“Like a stupid person I asked, do you have a fire extinguisher? And he said ‘no, no its worse than you think, it’s much worse than you think, we gotta go, you gotta get out of here!’” said Vibberts, who lost all her possessions in the fire.
Saba, 31, said he immediately jolted out of bed in the middle of the night.
“I looked out the windows and saw orange flames and within seconds the window started cracking and black smoke and flames started coming in through the kitchen,” said Saba.
“I knocked on Theresa’s door and was able to get her to come out.”
On his way out of the building, Saba told another man on the second floor “we gotta’ get out of here.”
The unidentified female victim was found after the fire was finally extinguished around 4:07 a.m., officials said. It was not immediately clear where the other unidentified male victim was found.
Two firefighters were treated for minor injuries at the scene, an FDNY spokesman said. The cause of the fire was not yet known.