(Update 8:45 a.m.) Kaplan Avenue resident Victor Colon Jr., one of three people to escape from the Greenport home destroyed by fire after midnight last night was awakened to screams of “Fire! Fire! Fire!” by landlord Kenneth MacAlpin.
When Colon, who’d been asleep in an upstairs bedroom, opened his bedroom door, “It was a wall of smoke,” he said. He escaped from the burning wood-frame home by leaping from a second-story window. Colon, MacAlpin and Margaret Richards, who were both on the first floor when the fire broke out, fled the home barefoot and with nothing but the clothes on their back, he said.
Two dogs, a short-haired German pointer and a pit bull mix, got out of the house and have not been seen since, he said. He is not sure whether cats in the home got out alive.
Colon, who was sheltered last night by family members living nearby, returned to the home early this morning to survey the damage. The wreckage was still smoldering.
“I don’t care about my things,” he said. “I’m just glad we got out alive.”
He said the fire started in a downstairs office, where there may have been a portable heater in use. The fire that consumed the home was so intense it threatened the house next door, which firefighters put water on to keep it from igniting.
He said he believes Richards and MacAlpin were put up in a local shelter overnight.
“The village is working right now to find them housing,” trustee Dave Murray said.
Original story:
Three residents of a Greenport home destroyed by fire last night escaped with minor smoke inhalation, police said.
According to Southold Town Police, a house fire broke out at 415 Kaplan Avenue in Greeport at 12:30 a.m. Kenneth MacAlpin, 51,, Margaret Richards, 60, and Victor Colon Jr, 43, all exited the home with minor smoke inhalation, police said.
Greenport Fire Department and other area departments responded and extinguished the fire. The occupants were transported to Eastern Long Island Hospital, where they were treated and released. The home was completely destroyed by the fire.
The Suffolk County Police Arson Squad was requested and responded. The origin of the fire did not seem suspious, but is under investigation at this time.
