More than a dozen residents of a Bronx building owned by the same consortium as the Twin Parks North West development, which was the site of a deadly fire last year, were evacuated and hospitalized early Thursday after a carbon monoxide leak.
Fire officials said 13 residents of Twin Parks South East — which is about a mile from Twin Parks North West, where 17 people were killed in a fire in January 2022 — were treated at Jacobi Hospital for non-life threatening injuries. First responders were called to the high-rise at 6:47 a.m. and had the situation under control roughly two hours later.
“Luckily I had my windows open already, so I wasn’t physically affected,” said Natalie Myers, 54, a fourth-floor resident who was told to evacuate around 7 a.m. by a concerned neighbor. Myers said carbon monoxide alarms were working on some of the higher floors, where she said there seemed to be higher concentrations of the poisonous gas.
“When I was in the elevator, the firefighter was physically carrying an elderly woman … and he had an oxygen thing over her mouth because, obviously, she was directly affected,” she said. “The streets and everything were closed off, full of fire department ambulances and police.”
Myers and other residents interviewed by Gothamist said the carbon monoxide scare was not a big surprise in the building, where security and rodent control measures have deteriorated in the last few years. Residents did acknowledge that a series of structural repairs had been made.
The building was bought in 2019 by a collection of companies under Bronx Park Phase I Preservation LLC– the same consortium that owns the Twin Parks North complex under the name Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC.
Camber Property Group, which is one of the real estate companies that owns the building, did not immediately comment on the situation.
Myers said firefighters at the scene told her that the boiler room was the source of the monoxide leak, though the FDNY would not confirm that information and said the leak’s cause is still under investigation.
After waiting outside for about an hour-and-a-half, Myers said she returned to her apartment to find the water had been shut off.
“Now that they know it’s in the boiler room, I guess they had to shut off the water to resolve the issue, you know? Because we just started getting heat yesterday…in order for the heat to come up, you have to go through the boiler,” she said.
Myers said building management has not been in touch about when the water could come back on, and did not notify residents about the monoxide leak.
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