A fire tore through a Manhattan building Thursday, destroying a street-level burger joint, fire officials said.
The three-alarm blaze erupted at around 6 a.m. inside the walls of Burger One on Second Avenue near East 94th Street in Yorkville and quickly spread to the four floors of apartments above, officials said.
Nearly 140 firefighters battled the fast-moving fire before bringing it under control about three hours later. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries.
FDNY Battalion Chief Michael McCrory said that the fire started in the walls of the burger place and moved up the pipe chasers, causing “extensive” damage to the floors above.
“Once it gets ahead of you and there’s extension to the floors above you got to open up the walls, the ceilings…It could have been much worse,” said McCrory.
He added that firefighters of the 33 responding units opened up most of the walls and the ceilings in the apartments when fighting the blaze.
“You have to keep trying to double-check. You got to keep ahead of it,” said McCrory. “The firefighters did a great job tracking down the fire and extinguishing the fire.”
Tenants in the building were able to escape the flames uninjured.