By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
CHINATOWN — The instability of two Chinatown apartment buildings slowed the effort to recover the body of Sing Ho, an 87-year-old resident of 285 Grand St. which was gutted by a horrific fire on Monday.
Fire officials got word that one resident was unaccounted for Monday afternoon. As firefighters battled the blaze from Grand Street, fears arose that one of the buildings was in danger of collapse.
But after a second survey by fire officials, 285 Grand St. was deemed structurally sound enough for firefighters to enter at 8 p.m. and look for Ho.
His body was found on the sixth floor, and pulled from the smoldering building nearly 24 hours after the blaze began Monday night.
Ho's relatives had been looking for him throughout Monday morning, even enlisting DNAinfo in the effort, after getting a call from him during the fire.
"Nobody's coming to get me," Ho told relatives over the phone, according to his goddaughter Nina Mar. "No one knows I'm here."
Officials from local City Councilwoman Margaret Chin's office were helping coordinate funeral arrangements with Ho's family.
The adjacent six-story buildings at 283 and 285-287 Grand St. were almost completely gutted by the seven-alarm blaze that broke out inside a store on the ground floor, authorities said, and will have to be demolished.
“It does appear that the buildings have been structurally compromised by fire and they will have to come down at some point,” said Department of Buildings spokeswoman Ryan Fitzgibbon, adding that engineers were at the site Tuesday surveying the damage.
Meanwhile, the office of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents lower Manhattan, was starting to work with the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development to find accommodations for those people left homeless by the blaze.
The FDNY set up a stand Tuesday at the corner of Grand and Allen streets to distribute smoke detectors and fire safety literature written in Chinese. Fire officials said the outreach effort would go on for a few more days. By Tuesday afternoon, the stand was swamped with people.
Parts of Grand Street remained closed Tuesday as work continued at the site.
As many as 30 businesses have been temporarily closed or otherwise affected by the fire, Chin said.
