HABITAT
Four-Alarm Fire Leads to a Massive Co-op Rebuild in Kew Gardens, Queens
Written by Jason Carpenter on September 03, 2014
The November 2013 fire was devastating. It broke out just after 7 p.m. on the third floor of the Kew Gardens co-op and quickly spread to the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, and to an area below the roof. By the time the four-alarm fire was declared under control at 9:15 p.m., the Queens Courier reported, eight of the 168 responding firefighters had been injured, and the building, a 135-unit co-op between Kew Gardens Road and Metropolitan Avenue in Queens, was a wreck.
Board president Rabindra Singh was shocked by the damage. "We had a fire here about four years prior to that, but this one was about two or three times larger," Singh says. "No one ever expects to deal with a disaster of this magnitude. Everyone had to play a role in the project, from me and the other six members of the board to the architect, the property manager, and even the shareholders."
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