11 Injured in Massive Valentine's Day Fires in Brooklyn

Photo courtesy of the FDNY

BROOKLYN, NY — Eleven total people were injured when two massive apartment fires broke out within hours of each other on what will go down as Brooklyn’s coldest-ever Valentine’s Day.

The first, at 171 Adelphi St. in Fort Greene, was called into the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) around 7 p.m. Sunday evening.

In that fire, one civilian and six firefighters — of more than 100 who battled the blaze — came away with minor injuries, according to the FDNY.

Photos from the scene show the old brownstone at 171 Adelphi completely engulfed in flames.

ABC7 reported that firefighters “pulled residents to safety through the front widows.” Journalist Michael Moynahan wrote on Twitter that he watched firefighters “hanging/falling out of windows to contain this insane fire.”

In the night’s second big fire, around 10:20 p.m., more than 150 firefighters fought back flames for upward of three hours at an apartment building at 49 Diamond St. in Greenpoint.

By the time the fire was brought under control around 1:30 a.m. Monday morning, it had caused heavy damage to 49 Diamond and had managed to spread the adjacent structures at 47 and 51 Diamond St., according to the FDNY.

Two civilians and two firefighters sustained minor injuries in the Greenpoint fire, an FDNY spokesperson told Patch.

In an interview with the New York Times, building resident Ewa Leoczak, a 50-year-old Polish woman who works as a home health aide, described blindly feeling her way down the building’s smoke-filled staircase in the dark.

“I was with angel probably,” Leoczak told the Times.

The causes behind both Valentine’s Day fires in Brooklyn are still under investigation, according to the FDNY.