Yorkville Apartment Fire Leaves One Woman Dead, Others Displaced

A fifth-floor apartment fire that broke out on a birdhouse-lined block in Yorkville on Wednesday, Nov. 13, has left one woman dead, seven others injured, and some building residents displaced.

According to FDNY, they received a call about smoke and fire at 409 E. 81st St. at 12:33 p.m. The five-story, dark-gray-painted apartment building stands on the north side of the block between First and York avenues, and is conjoined with the address 407 E. 81st St. That, the western half of the building, appeared unaffected by the blaze.

Around 60 fire and EMS personnel from 12 units responded to the scene, which left one, at present unidentified, 74-year-old woman critically injured, with three firefighters and four building residents suffering minor injuries.

The 74-year-old woman was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center at 525 E. 68th St., where she died.

“It was a white smoke, a ghostly plume pouring out of her door,” a fifth-floor resident, 42, told the Daily News. “I called the super and the fire department. It was very sad. It was very traumatic.”

“The firefighters were prepping a stretcher for her and then pulled her out. They were trying to resuscitate her,” the resident added. “They were pumping her chest, but she wasn’t responding.”

When Straus News arrived at the scene on the following afternoon, the first thing this reporter noticed was the birdhouses, delightful and brightly colored, affixed to trees up and down the block.

While he didn’t see any birds in residence, the decorations were a project of the Yorkville Block Association, of which, according the Daily News, the victim was a member. Queries to the block association about the deceased woman were unanswered at press time.

“She has been here a long time,” Wally Acevedo, the building super, told the Daily News. “She’s very active in the community. She stayed on top of a lot of things.”

“She ordered them,” Acevedo said of the birdhouses, “got them and painted them, and she put them up.”

“She hasn’t been active in the last few months because she had an operation and she wasn’t getting around,” Acevedo added. “Before that, she was very active.”

Since the fire, the victim’s apartment has been boarded up from the outside, and a Department of Buildings “partial vacate” order by Officer Rubinstein was posted on the front door.

“All apartments in the ‘A’ line,” the order states, “are or may be imminently perilous to life.”

Also posted on the door was a Home Visit Note from the Disaster Services unit of the American Red Cross, Greater New York Region.

While it’s unclear if any building residents have taken up the Red Cross offer, some people were indeed moving out, with the boxes, bins, bags, and suitcases of their displaced lives sitting on the street awaiting a ride to somewhere else.