By Alexandra Cheney and Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Staff
WEST VILLAGE — Four firefighters were injured in a blaze that broke out on the roof of a West Village apartment building on Wednesday and left a 20-foot hole in the ceiling of a top floor apartment, firefighters at the scene said.
The FDNY received a report about 2:15 p.m. saying that smoke was coming from the roof of 72 Barrow Street, the FDNY said.
The firefighters discovered that the fire originated in a crawl space between the sixth floor and roof of the building, FDNY Chief John Bloy said at the scene.
Firefighters were forced to cut out a 10-by-20-foot section of the roof to access and extinguish the fire, Bloy said. Because the crawl space spans several apartments, fire officials sounded a second alarm and evacuated all of the complex’s residents, he said.
Bloy said four firefighters sustained minor injuries at the scene.
Savannah Stevenson, 33, lives in the apartment that caught fire. She has lived in the one-bedroom, sixth floor apartment for six years.
"I'm not normally home but I came home today because I was let out of jury duty this morning. I was sitting at my computer and I began to smell something funny," Stevenson said.
She said she initially thought it was her computer overheating, but she shut it down and the smell still didn't go away.
"There were workers on the roof all day and all of a sudden it sounded like they dropped a bundle of stuff. Someone then yelled 'boss, boss' and ran off the roof and down the stairs," Stevenson said.
"Smoke began to pour out the cracks and crevasses of the building and that's when the fire department showed up. I left my apartment as they were dragging fire hoses upstairs. They went into my apartment and began ripping open the ceilings."
Twenty emergency trucks and nearly 100 firefighters responded to the call, FDNY on the scene said.
The cause of the blaze is still under investigation, an FDNY source reported.
"There's no ceiling, its straight sky and the bare bones. Everything is on the floor in three inches of water and three inches of rubble that was my ceiling," Stevenson said.
