Park Slope Bartender Loses Everything In Brooklyn's 5-Alarm Fire

BROOKLYN, NY — Scott Small was still asleep at 10:30 a.m. Monday, having worked a bartending shift the night before, when his wife, Emily, smelled smoke in their Boerum Hill apartment.

"She thought it smelled like someone lit a match in the apartment and was confused because she was the only one up," Small told Patch. "Then she noticed there was smoke billowing in through our bedroom window."

Within minutes their apartment at 35 Dean St. had filled with dense smoke, making it impossible to breathe, Small said, so the couple grabbed their phones, their dog, and left.

"The smoke was thick enough when I was leaving that I realized we weren't going back inside," he said.

The couple have visited their apartment once since the five-alarm fire tore through their building — a gym-slash-apartment building that spans Boerum Place between Dean and Pacific streets — but everything that they own was destroyed.

"We were able to get a fire proof safe out, but otherwise there was nothing," Small said, noting that he and Emily, self-described collectors, had amassed a "lifetime of stuff" in the apartment, which they lived in for three years.

While some items are replaceable, Small said that most of the couple's belongings were sentimental; reminders of loved ones and trips they've been on together.

"We're both massive readers, so we had a giant book collection," he said, noting that his wife works for the New York Public Library. "When we go on vacation we like to find independent book stores and buy books. We lost a lot of first editions and books that were signed."

Returning to 35 Dean Street isn't an option, since the city deemed the building unsafe for tenants, so the couple — and the nine other families who lived in the building — are now depending on support from the city and friends.

The couple are sleeping at a friend's place (though Small said the city found hotel rooms for everyone and was helpful in the aftermath) and are taking things day by day.

"We're mostly still in shock" he said. "We're going back to work, but we don't know what's next."

For Small work is at The Commissioner, a Fifth Avenue bar between Carroll Street and Garfield Place where he's been bartending for years.

The bar's owner, Brendan Byrnes, created a GoFundMe on behalf of the couple, which reached more than double its goal in less than a day.

"This couple is the most selfless, kind and caring partnership I've had the pleasure of knowing," Byrnes wrote on the page.

Small said that the outpouring of support has been a spot of hope for him and Emily during the past couple of devastating days — so much so that he asked people to stop donating to their fundraiser, and instead extend support towards a building-wide fund.

"Our community has just been so remarkable in trying to support us and take care of us," he said. "It makes us feel comforted and hopeful."

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