The fire at Avalon Garden City (credit: Paul Prince)

[Updated at 11:30 a.m. on April 12 with a statement AvalonBay Communities]

A morningtime blaze damaged an under-construction apartment complex in Garden City, Long Island, fire officials said. The fire broke out before noon at the Avalon Garden City, located at 998 Stewart Avenue, according to a spokesperson for the Garden City Fire Department. Construction workers were on the scene at the time of the fire, he said, but there are no reports of injuries at this time. As CBS New York reported earlier today, the fire badly damaged the roof of one section of the complex.

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A four-alarm fire ravaged Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, a modern Orthodox Upper East Side synagogue that was under renovation, last night, destroying the roof and heavily damaging the upper floors, according to the New York Times. The fire began on the roof though the cause was not immediately known. No major injuries were sustained.
It took 170 firefighters around an hour to get the blaze under control at the 110-year-old synagogue on 85th Street near Lexington Avenue.
“Flames were 40 feet in the air, and there were large clouds of thick black smoke,” said Stephen Ruzow, chairman of the FDNY Foundation and a member of the synagogue. [more]

A Manhattan jury today acquitted a senior construction supervisor of wrongdoing in the deaths of two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan in 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported. The supervisor, Jeffrey Melofchik, had been on trial for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, among several other charges, and was one of three supervisors charged in connection with the case. An asbestos abatement supervisor at the building was found not guilty of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment by the same jury yesterday. Melofchik had been working as a site safety manager for Bovis Lend Lease at the time of the fire, and was accused of failing to fix a faulty standpipe that would have otherwise allowed the two men who died to get water while fighting the blaze. [more]

The New York City Police Department is investigating a suspicious fire that broke out this morning at a six-story Bronx residential building, leaving three dead and three injured, according to the New York Times. The fire at 2275 Morris Avenue off the corner of East 183rd Street in Fordham Heights broke out at 7:50 a.m. and took roughly 40 minutes to get under control, according to a spokesperson for the Fire Department of New York, who said that 60 firefighters arrived on the scene. No firefighters suffered serious injuries. [more]

A tenant in an illegal apartment in East New York died after being trapped in the cellar dwelling during a small fire early this morning, according to the Department of Buildings. The two-story building at 568 Drew Street had been illegally converted to accommodate a basement tenant, a DOB spokesperson said.

Firefighters received a call alerting them to the blaze at 4:49 a.m. and arrived at the scene at 4:52 a.m., according to a spokesperson for the New York City Fire Department. The fire was under control at 5:23 a.m.

The cause of the fire is under investigation by the New York City Police Department, according to a NYPD spokesperson. [more]

Turns out living in a firehouse makes you no less susceptible to neighborhood fires. The next door apartment building to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s renovated Greenwich Village firehouse at 84 West 3rd Street caught fire early this morning, according to DNAinfo, but was controlled after roughly 30 minutes. The 104-year-old firehouse, which Cooper bought in 2006 for $4.3 million, was not damaged. [DNAinfo]

The former tenants of 289 Grand Street, the sole structure left standing after a deadly, four-building Chinatown fire in April, are now locked in a court battle with their landlord over the fate of the building and are expected to appear in New York City Housing Court again this week, the Daily News reported. The landlord, Wong’s Grand Street Realty, wants to tear down the building, arguing that repairs would cost more than the property — on which the Department of Buildings issued a vacate order following the fire — is currently worth. Meanwhile, the 11 tenants, mostly Chinese immigrants who’ve been living in city shelters or in temporary housing for the past six months, filed a lawsuit in New York Housing Court in June to force Wong’s to make renovations. Late last month, they showed up at the shuttered site with a court order allowing them to fetch some of their belongings from the building. Their attorneys have accused the landlord of inflating the costs of renovations in an attempt to squeeze out rent-regulated tenants. [NYDN]

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The five-story condominium building at 240 East Houston Street, near Avenue A, caught fire last night just after 5:30 p.m., blanketing the neighborhood in smoke but causing no deaths or major injuries, according to the New York Times. Eight firefighters suffered minor injuries. A renovation project had recently begun on the roof of the roughly 20-unit building, and residents said they suspected that was the source of the blaze. The average price of an apartment at the building is close to $1.2 million. The Fire Department of New York was still investigating the cause of the fire and assessing the damage last night, but residents were temporarily displaced. [NYT]

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Only one minor injury reported, no fatalities

The fire at 80 Devoe Street (photos by Derek Zahedi)

A
fire broke out this morning at 80 Devoe Street between Leonard and
Lorimer streets in Williamsburg, according to a staffer from The Real Deal
who was on the scene and first noticed black smoke and heard people
screaming as they exited the building down the fire escape a [more]

The fire at 80 Devoe Street (photos by Derek Zahedi)

A fire broke out this morning at 80 Devoe Street between Leonard and Lorimer streets in Williamsburg, according to a staffer from The Real Deal who was on the scene and first noticed black smoke and heard people screaming as they exited the building down the fire escape at a [more]