A fire tore through the back of a vacant building in the Van Nest neighborhood of the Bronx, leaving a normally lively block looking, for a time, like a ghost town. The FDNY responded to the blaze on Union Port Road, and despite the destruction it caused, no one was injured.
According to the building's manager, no one was living inside the apartments, and the bakery on the ground floor had been closed for some time. The manager said they had taken over ownership of the building only about two weeks ago, and the fire and the damage it left behind have now thrown a wrench into their plans for the property.
A pack of fire trucks raced toward the scene in the afternoon, responding to the fire at 1729 Union Port Road. Firefighters climbed to the roof of the vacant three-story building as they worked to track down the source of the smoke that was pouring from the back walls of the structure.
As crews fought the flames, the fire rose to a second alarm and began spreading to the buildings attached to it. In all, 141 first responders were involved in battling the blaze, a sizeable deployment for a structure that, by the time it caught fire, had largely been left empty.
It was not the first time the building had gone up in flames. About two years ago, the bakery on the ground floor caught fire as well. A look inside after this latest fire revealed severe damage, including a portion of the ceiling in the bakery that had collapsed.
With the halls left charred and the building empty once again, the focus has turned to determining what sparked the fire. Investigators and fire marshals are looking into the cause, while officials stressed the most important outcome of the day: that despite the scale of the blaze, no one was hurt.