Courtney Luciana Photos
The scene of the fire on Sunday night.
Next-door neighbor Angel Ojeda surveys the damage on Monday.
Forty-five New Haven Firefighters responded to a call at 9:22 p.m. on Sunday to extinguish a blaze at 150 Columbus Ave. that left 11 people homeless.
The blaze spread through the second and third floors, and spread to the building adjacent.
Angel Ojeda is the homeowner of the house next door, 154 Columbus Ave., that got caught in the fire. He has owned the building, which currently houses 11 residents, for 30 years.
The aftermath: Ojeda's house on the left; 150 Columbus Ave. on the right.
Fortunately for Ojeda, only the exterior of his house was damaged. From the inside, only a small crack in the window remained from the blaze.
“I was nervous last night,” Ojeda said. “Everyone around was screaming, ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’”
“I was thinking that my house was going to burn,” Ojeda said. “Fortunately, it doesn’t look like too much damage.”
Due to minor to no damage inside the home, he and his wife still slept in their house last night.
It took the NHFD about 40 minutes to get the fire under control. All 11 of the occupants of 150 Columbus , nine adults and two children, were safely evacuated from the structure. They are now being put up elsewhere since they can’t return to the building.
“The girl who lives upstairs with two kids, they came out around 10 p.m. and she was crying,” Ojeda said. “She didn’t tell me where was going to go. She came back here very, very late.”
150 Columbus Ave. Sunday night around the time investigators cleared the scene.
That mom and several other of those residents were still seen sitting outside and in their cars until almost 1 a.m. Many were shivering from the frigid temperatures, with American Red Cross blankets wrapped around their bodies.
One of the children was crying. Another resident, handicapped and in an electric wheelchair, was devastated.
Investigators cleared the scene by 1:30 a.m. The suspected cause remains under investigation.
“I saw all of the firefighters here,” Ojeda said. “They did a good job.”
One firefighter suffered a minor burn, according to Assistant Justin McCarthy.
Kapura General Contractors Inc., emergency services response team, boarded up the windows of 150 Columbus Ave. They were seen leaving Ojeda’s house around 9 a.m. Monday.
Ojeda was upset to see his neighbors lose their homes but he knew that he was one of the lucky ones. He said that he doesn’t know where the other residents have been relocated.
“We didn’t lose any people,” Ojeda said. “That’s the most important thing.”
An inside look of Ojeda's house: No interior damage.
150 Columbus on Monday morning.