UES Fires Leaves Lenox Hill Building 'Uninhabitable:' FDNY

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A fire that ripped through a five-story building left residents with an uncertain future.

The blaze began on the first floor of a neighboring building just before 3:30 pm Monday and quickly spread across the 16-unit, five-story building at 404 East 63rd St., FDNY officials said.

At the corner of First Avenue and 63rd Street, residents from the building looked on, eager for information as FDNY, EMS and Red Cross disaster relief workers came to and fro.

Three firefighters and one resident suffered minor injuries and were treated at Cornell Hospital, according to officials. First responders helped rescue two dogs inside the building.

One resident told Patch that he didn't know what was going on in the fire's aftermath and had to leave the state to stay with family.

The displaced New Yorker told Patch that he had seen the owners of the neighboring uniform shop mulling about earlier that day after "hardly seeing them" in the last several months.

He added that the business was set to vacate the building later today.

"It is quite odd that they were there the day of the fire the day before getting kicked out," the resident told Patch.

An air shaft between the two structures helped to funnel the flames from the first-floor business into the neighboring building, FDNY officials said in a press conference.

"Once a fire enters an airshaft, there's kind of an effect that just pulls it upward," said Assistant Chief, Manhattan Borough Commander Michael Ajello. "And it extends into each floor."

Smoke eaters arrived just five minutes after the call came in, but the blaze took another hour and a half to get under control, bringing over 30 units and 138 fire personnel to the site near First Avenue.

While fire officials didn't have an exact number of how many residents were displaced, Ajello told reporters at a press conference that the building is "not going to be habitable right now."