A big fire broke out on the top floor of an apartment building Spanish Harlem earlier today, leaving six injured. The fire started around 8:50 a.m. in a sixth-floor apartment at 242 E. 116th Street near 2nd Avenue. According to FDNY, it took about 138 firefighters nearly an hour to get the three-alarm fire under control. One firefighter was taken to NY Hospital with burns to the neck and chest; two other firefighters, and three residents, were taken to local hospitals with minor injuries as well.
Officials are still investigating what started the fire, but a source told DNAInfo it was sparked in an apartment that was overly-cluttered. "It makes it that much harder to go in there and search for people and get to where the fire is when there is junk throughout the house," the source said.
An FDNY spokesman echoed that to us, saying the amount of stuff slowed down their search for possible people—and led to a firefighter throwing much of it onto the street (see the last photo in the gallery above for evidence of that). A tipster who was at the scene took many of these photos, and told us what she saw:
I walked out of my apartment building and this fire was happening this morning. I got there right as the firemen were arriving. One fireman went in through the roof to open windows from the inside while others were trying to open the windows from the fire escape. When they couldn't get them open they broke the windows and that is when the fire started to blaze.
