Separate Fires Leave Four Dead, More Injured

Two different fires in Brooklyn and the Bronx yesterday killed four people and injured three more. Both fires occurred relatively early Saturday morning. The first was reported about 7 a.m. and was on the second floor of a two-story house in Bensonhurst. The occupants were all immigrants from Guatemala. It took firefighters almost 40 minutes to bring the blaze under control, at which point three of the residents had succumbed to smoke inhalation. Another was transported to the burn unit at Staten Island Hospital. A fifth man survived the fire by jumping through a window, landing on the sidewalk among broken glass.

The second fire erupted just a little over an hour later in the Bronx, again in a second floor apartment. The residents of that apartment were two elderly women, a 98-year-old mother and her daughter, who was 76. Daughter Blondel Alston, who suffered from dementia, was cooking breakfast yesterday morning when her robe caught fire on the stove. Her nearly century-old mother Dorothy Brown attempted to save her daughter but Alston later died from her burns at Jacobi Medical Center. Brown was also treated at Jacobi for minor burns and smoke inhalation.

Dorothy Brown (seated) and Blondel Alston