One person was injured by a two-alarm fire that broke out in a vacant Ocean Hill home late on Sunday night.
Firefighters responded to reports of fire in a boarded-up at 672 Decatur St. just before 11 p.m. on Feb. 15, according to the FDNY.
Crews from Engine Company 233 and Ladder Company 176 were met with heavy smoke and flames and quickly triggered a second alarm as the fire began to spread to the cockloft area between the building’s top floor and roof and threatened the attached home next door.
More than 100 firefighters worked to battle the blaze, and were forced to run a hose line over the roof of a car parked in front of a nearby hydrant. The blaze was brought under control just over an hour later, at 12:30 a.m.
One civilian suffered moderate injuries, per the FDNY, and was taken by ambulance to Interfaith Medical Center.
672 Van Siclen Ave. has been under a full vacate order since a fire in 2013, city records show. Department of Buildings inspectors noted at that time that the building had been illegally converted into a transitional housing structure with 28 beds.
In 2019, the city slapped the building owner — a Puerto-Rico based company — with a $24,000 fine after discovering that the home was occupied by at least six people, in violation of the years-old vacate order. In recent years, neighbors have complained that people were living in the derelict home, records show.
The FDNY requested structural inspections of 672 Van Siclen Ave. and a neighboring building that may have been impacted by the fire, per the Department of Buildings portal.
Brooklyn has seen a swath of residential fires over the last several weeks — six unrelated fires broke out in local homes last weekend, and another blaze in an allegedly illegally-converted home in East New York displaced 12 people on Feb. 10.
