By Jennifer Glickel and Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo Staff
UPPER EAST SIDE — A residential tower that houses employees and relatives of patients at nearby hospitals had to be partially evacuated Wednesday afternoon after a fire broke out.
Dozens of firefighters battled the blaze for more than an hour after it broke out just before 3:30 p.m. at the Helmsley Medical Tower, 1320 York Ave., near E.70th Street.
The 37-story building is used as a residence for family members of patients and employees of the nearby Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital. It houses a five-floor clinic, which was also evacuated.
“I thought it was probably just a false alarm so I didn’t go anywhere," said Sormeh Saei, a nurse who lives in the building who was at home painting in her 30th floor apartment when the alarm went off.
"But then I started smelling smoke from inside my room with the windows closed. I walked out and walked down the stairs. As I got further down the smell of smoke got stronger.”
Saei noted that many of the patient’s visitors who stay there are elderly, and she was worried that the smoke would impact their breathing or frighten them.
One elderly woman who was in a fourth floor stairwell during the fire was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation, but appeared to be fine, a fireman on the scene said.
The fire originated in one of the electrical rooms in the subbasement, the FDNY said.
