A 79-year-old New Hyde Park man died in an explosion and fire that engulfed his Seventh Avenue house early Sunday morning and injured two firefighters.
The man’s body was discovered in a vestibule near the back door of the house by members of the New Hyde Park Fire Department, who responded to the emergency call short after 1 a.m. on Sunday.
“When we arrived the whose house was on fire,” Chief John Willers of the New Hyde Park Fire Department said, adding that a “massive amount of flames” thwarted the firefighters’ initial line of attack in front of the house.
Willers said the New Hyde Park volunteers then gained access through the back of the house, where they discovered the man’s body 10 feet from the door. They then realized that the structural integrity of the building had been compromised and they with drew from the house.
“We pulled everybody out. At this point, we couldn’t do anything for him,” Willers said. He said the two New Hyde Park volunteers had sustained minor injuries and were released shortly after being taken to an area hospital.
Willers said an oxygen tank was discovered in the bedroom of the house. Neighbors said the man was suffering from emphysema, but smoked cigarettes.
The identity of the dead man, known to his neighbors as “Lee,” was not revealed pending notification of family.
Williers estimated that the 80 New Hyde Park firefighters on the scene, assisted by units from Floral Park, Bellerose Terrace and Stewart Manor, brought the fire under controls approximately one half-hour after they started trying to subdue the flames.
A neighbor of the victim, Suzanne Piotrovsky, said she was awakened by her mother’s screams, and ran outside to see the house in flames. Her parents were awakened by the explosion.
“I tried to see if I could get to him, but the house was immediately engulfed in flames,” she said.
Piotrovsky said her father, Alfred, initially called 911 and was put on hold for one minute. Her mother, Carole, then called the fire department emergency number, and the New Hyde Park volunteers were there within minutes, she said.
Piotrovsky said she and her mother had acted as caretakers for their elderly neighbor over the past two months. She described the man as being very independent, but obviously in need of assistance because of his deteriorating health. The two women regularly went grocery shopping for the man. And earlier on Saturday night, Suzanne Piotrovsky said she had delivered him his favorite meal, a sausage and cheese sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts. He had requested that they buy him cigarettes earlier in the day, but she said she and her mother refused his request.
Piotrovsky, who is a radiation therapist at South Nassau Hospital, said the man had recently returned home after being hospitalized at Winthrop University Hospital. She said he had refused further treatment, but had been visited twice during the week preceding the fire by home health-care workers, who she said were contemplating an intervention to remove him from the house because of dangerous conditions.
Observing the condition of the house when she dropped off groceries, Piotrovsky said the house was in a disheveled state with debris everywhere.
“He was a hoarder. There were piles and piles of everything” she said.
Piotrovsky said her neighbor should not have been permitted to continue living in the decrepit conditions.
“This could have been avoided, this whole situation,” Piotrovsky said. “The living conditions put other people’s lives in danger in addition to his life.”
After running outside and realizing there was nothing she could do to save her neighbor, she said she pulled the family’s cars out of the driveway adjacent to the growing conflagration. The flames did ultimately scorch the side of the west wall of the Piotrovsky’s house.
“In another minute, our cars could have gone up,” she said.
Her visibly shaken mother could only utter a brief comment on the event.
“It’s a terrible tragedy. It just shouldn’t have happened,” she said.
The two Piotrovsky women said they had been in touch with their neighbor’s sole relative, a niece living in Tennessee, and had called her on Sunday to tell her the news about uncle’s death.
Residents six blocks from the explosion reportedly were awakened by it.
Chief Hillers said the cause of the fire is under investigation by the county fire marshal’s office.
