FDNY battles ‘intense’ blaze at luxury apartments in Greenwich Village

An intense, five-alarm fire broke out inside a luxury apartment building in Greenwich Village on Wednesday night, sending thick plumes of smoke billowing across lower Manhattan.
The blaze started around 5:45 pm. inside a deli on the ground floor of 60 E 9th Street before spreading to the building’s cockloft, according to FDNY officials.
Five firefighters were treated for injuries, all of which were minor.
No residents were hurt.
“We are investigating now the possibility the fire actually started in a deli on the first floor and traveled up a shaft to the top floor,” Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro explained at a press conference.

“It quickly spread to the space between the top floor ceiling and the roof that we call the ‘cockloft,'” he said. “The good news is none of the residents of this building were injured.”

Nigro added that the blaze appeared to have started in the kitchen of Bully’s Deli.
Footage posted on social media on Wednesday evening showed firefighters smashing apartment windows — in the attempt to ventilate the building and rescue those who were still trapped — as residents watched on from the street and nearby rooftops.
“There’s a really intense fire in a building on Broadway and 8th St by Astor Place in Manhattan,” tweeted Jamie Kimmel.
The city’s emergency management team urged locals to stay away and warned of possible traffic delays, due to the smoke.
“People nearby avoid smoke, close windows,” they tweeted.
The affected building, known as The Hamilton, is a six-story co-op with more than 200 units, according to StreetEasy.
It was built in 1954 and includes a garden, 24-hour doorman, bike room, and separate storage space.
Apartments tend to range between $525,000 for studios to $1.25 million for a two-bedroom.
Residents were forced to gathered outside the building and watch in horror as the fire intensified Wednesday night.
“I work on Bleecker and by the time I got to Great Jones I looked up and saw it was my building that the smoke was coming [from], the first thing I thought about was my dogs were trapped in the building,” said James Abraham, owner of the nearby Bleecker Street Bar.
“As I was tying to cross 8th street, I was stopped by someone, and they said, ‘No one is getting in the building, if you try to get in I’ll have you arrested.’ So I walked around to 9th street and went in to get my dogs.”
Fearing for the pups’ lives, Abraham navigated his way through the thick black smoke and up to his sixth floor apartment — where he found his four-legged best friends frantically waiting.
“I was very concerned and very focused,” he said. “They were a little distressed. All the noise, smoke and commotion definitely agitated them.”
Abraham added, “You could smell smoke through the whole building. It was permeating throughout.”
Nearly 200 firefighters were still battling the blaze as of 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Videos captured at the scene showed them dousing the building with water in the attempt to contain it, to no avail.
“It appears to be getting worse, not better,” Natasha Noman tweeted at the time.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore