Fire Tears Through Troubled Brooklyn Building

Photo courtesy of Chris Mansfield.

East Flatbush residents watched in horror on Monday as flames ripped through an apartment building at 5409 Kings Highway.

Freelance photographer Chris Mansfield, 29, who lives in the area, says he happened to ride his bike past the burning building around 5:30 p.m.

The building’s residents were standing outside, he says, watching as firefighters pulled more people out of the apartment building.

“They looked pretty scared,” he says. “Some of them were crying.”

He describes one of the men rescued by the FDNY as a Hispanic male in his 30s. ”They pulled him out of the building, and he was coughing pretty heavy,” Mansfield says.

Another woman on the ground ”looked like she was trying to get air,” he says.

Mansfield snapped a photo of one resident who dropped to her knees out of concern for her pets, who were still inside her apartment. He uploaded the photo to his Twitter and Instagram pages.

A spokesman for the FDNY says the second-story fire was under control by 6 p.m., and that two patients were transported to the local Beth Israel Medical Center for smoke inhalation.

City building records for 5409 Kings Highway show an apartment building plagued by complaints of hazardous construction sites, broken infrastructure and overcrowding.

For example, in 2011, multiple residents called to report that up to eight people were living in a one-bedroom apartment. And in 2015, a resident from the building next door, which has the same owner, told the Department of Buildings:

THERE IS NO HEAT OR HOT WATER. EVERY TIME I COMPLAIN, THE MANAGEMENT SAYS IT’S A BOILER ISSUE BUT THEY NEVER SEND ANYONE TO FIX IT.

There is no answer on Monday evening at any of the phone lines provided for Kings Highway Realty Group, listed as the building’s owner.

“Just riding my bike through there, it doesn’t look up to par,” Mansfield says. ”It looks pretty run down.”

Mansfield says he watched as firefighters were forced to break through a locked gate at the front of the property before they could get to the apartment fire. ”They had to cut the lock off,” he says.