Fire In Upper East Side NYCHA Building Fills Area With Smoke

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A fire broke out in a trash compactor at an Upper East Side public housing complex on Monday, filling the neighborhood with smoke — but causing no injuries, according to officials.

The call went out around 2:15 p.m. for a report of smoke at 1806 First Ave.: part of the Isaacs Houses complex, near East 93rd Street.

Firefighters arrived five minutes later, finding a trash compactor fire "creating large volumes of smoke," an FDNY spokesperson said. After extending a hose toward the blaze, firefighters extinguished the fire within an hour, according to the FDNY.

Still, the effects of the fire were tangible in the neighborhood: blocks of Second Avenue were "covered in noxious smoke," as one Twitter user put it.

Tenant Saundrea Coleman told Patch that her own apartment in the building had been unaffected by the fire, but that a relative lived close enough to the compactor that her own apartment filled with smoke, forcing her to flee.

Before the welcome news that no injuries had been recorded, the fire triggered inevitable memories of the Jan. 9 fire in the Bronx that claimed 17 lives.