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Inwood Fire Rips Through 2 Apartments, FDNY Says

By  Lindsay Armstrong and Aidan Gardiner | January 27, 2015 4:27pm 

 Firefighters cordoned off an area on a snow-covered hill where debris from the fire landed.
Firefighters cordoned off an area on a snow-covered hill where debris from the fire landed.
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DNAinfo/Lindsay Armstrong

INWOOD — Two families were displaced after a fire broke out in an apartment building on Park Terrace West Tuesday afternoon, FDNY officials said.

The flames, which began about 12:50 p.m. inside 31 Park Terrace West near Isham Park, spread through the floors and walls to scorch an apartment on the sixth floor and another directly below it on the fifth floor, according to FDNY Battalion Chief Michael Leanza.

No civilians were injured, but two firefighters were treated for minor injuries at New York-Presbyterian hospital, officials said.

"I saw firefighters and heard them breaking windows and saw smoke coming out of windows," said neighbor Hector Marin, 31.

"I came outside and you could smell smoke," added Paul Rance, 27, who lives in a building next to where the fire broke out. "By the time I came out, [the firefighters] were throwing debris out the window."

Kathryn Curry, 26, who lives in the sixth-floor apartment next to where the fire started, said two brothers lived in the burned-out apartment but she did not know their names.

"It was a family apartment," she said "It's where they grew up, too, not just a place they've been renting."

No information was available on the residents of the fifth-floor apartment.

About 60 firefighters were able to bring the blaze under control by 1:30 p.m., FDNY officials said.

Fire marshals are still trying to determine what sparked the blaze.