By Patrick Hedlund, Yepoka Yeebo, Michael Ventura and Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo Staff
CHINATOWN — An 87-year-old man is missing after his Chinatown building was engulfed in an inferno Monday morning that took firefighters hours to extinguish, the FDNY said Monday night.
Local elected officials and community members have been searching for Sing Ho, a resident of 285 Grand Street, to no avail. The FDNY said that he may still be inside the smoldering building. Ho lives on the sixth floor.
The goddaughter of Ho, Nina Mar, reached out to DNAinfo Monday morning for help locating her godfather.
Mar said that Ho had called family members during the fire to say that he was trapped inside and that the smoke was getting heavier. Relatives told him to stay close to the ground so that he could breathe more easily.
"Nobody's coming to get me," Mar said her godfather told relatives on the phone. He said that the electronic had gone out and he couldn't see anything.
"It sounded like he was ready to give up," Mar said Ho's relatives told her about their conversations with him.
Ho's two daughters went to the office of City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who represents the district, earlier in the day to try and find their father.
"It's really, really, very unlikely," Chin said of the chances that Ho had escaped.
The blaze that engulfed 283 and 285 Grand Street sent hundreds of people into the street, destroying nearly all of their possessions and leaving many unsure where they would sleep Monday night and beyond.
By Monday afternoon, the FDNY's investigation had to be halted after 283 and 285 Grand Street were found to be unstable. The fire caused the buildings to shake and vibrate, the Department of Buildings said in complaints issued Monday. Officials said the buildings will likely have to be torn down.
"The two of them will have to come down," said Chin. "That's what we were told."
"It's a tragedy. I know people in the building," she said. "Conditions right now are not safe."
By early Monday evening the Red Cross had reached out to about 220 residents displaced by the fire and had temporarily housed close to 100 of them, Red Cross official Dario Diaz said.
Wai-Sing Seto, owner of the RX Plus Pharmacy in 289 Grand St., a heavily damaged building next to those that burned, watched as firefighters continued to douse the smoldering buildings Monday afternoon.
"It doesn't look like anything's going to be salvageable," he said. "I would suspect that pretty much everything is shot."
Eleven buildings near the fire scene were evacuated, officials said. Some residents of other buildings on the block were allowed in briefly to gather necessary items, like medication.
Residents have complained several times of various maintenance issues with the building.
In May 2009, the Department of Buildings issued a complaint saying the rear fire escape was "completely blocked" by "all types of junk and garbage."
In April 2008, a caller to the Buildings Department said a storefront awning at a building next door was hanging under the fire escape, "preventing the ladder from coming down," according to a complaint.
At 283 Grand Street, there were several more violations: Two complaints for a faulty and smoky boiler were issued in December 2009; two illegal construction complaints were written in 2009 and 2007; bikes were cited for blocking an exit in 2006; and a vent problem was also reported in 2006.
Some residents told DNAinfo that the buildings' prior problems made them think initially the seven-alarm blaze was not as severe as it turned out to be.
Julie Chen, 26, who lived on the 4th floor of 283 Grand Street, said she tried to leave the building after the fire broke out, but saw black smoke and went back into her apartment.
She covered her face with a wet rag, she said, and then called her boyfriend to ask him what she should do. After checking with a firefighter, Chen's boyfriend told her to get out of the building, so she climbed out onto the fire escape.
When she looked down, Chen saw a throng of residents and passersby looking up at her, watching her escape.
"The whole block was watching me," she said.
Chen got out, but all her possessions were destroyed, she told DNAinfo.
"I'm just very frustrated," Chen said, adding she had grown up in the building and shared her apartment with her brother. "I'm lucky that I have a pair of shoes right now."
Christopher Kui, executive director of Asian Americans for Equality, said his organization had been aware of the building and its problems for a year. His group is working with the Red Cross — which bused some residents up to the West Side to stay in a hotel — to sort out the residents, many of whom don't speak English.
"We want to make sure that tenants stay together," he said, adding that people in the community only know each other, and only know the streets of the neighborhood. Language barriers make it harder for them to get around.
