Blaze sweeps 3 units in building near Square

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
By CHARLES HACK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Two persons, including a pregnant woman, were injured yesterday and seven persons were displaced by a three-alarm fire that ripped through at least three apartments at a four-story building at Van Wagenen and Pavonia avenues, officials said.

It took 80 firefighters about a half hour to put out the blaze, first reported at 12:23 p.m., at the 20-unit building, said Fire Director Armando Roman.

Gabrielle Rivera, 19, who is eight months pregnant, was treated at the Jersey City Medical Center for smoke inhalation, while Firefighter Glenn Giordano, of Engine 15, received stitches at the hospital for a cut to his right hand he suffered as he was venting a window with his ax, Roman said.

A spokesman confirmed Giordano had been treated and released.

Roman described the fire as sending flames like a "blow torch" out of the window. As firefighters battled the blaze an oxygen tank in the one of the apartments exploded, he said.

Witnesses described seeing a woman with a baby yelling for help from a second-floor apartment before firefighters escorted her from the building.

"She was screaming 'My baby, my baby!'" said Jesse Lee, who lives in a nearby apartment and said he heard fire alarms go off at the building long before there were any flames.

The American Red Cross of Northern New Jersey opened a shelter yesterday afternoon for residents unable to return to their apartments while power was out, officials said.

Roman said workers - who left the scene before firefighters arrived - had been sanding floors and re-coating them with polyurethane just before the fire.

The resident who rented the property was in Puerto Rico yesterday, but her daughter had let the workers in to do the work, Roman said.

The Jersey City Arson Unit is investigating, but preliminary findings indicate a spark of some sort may have ignited "heavy vapors" from the polyurethane, Roman said.