Firefighters in Manhattan responded to a fire on Tuesday afternoon at a well-known hotel and an adjacent French restaurant, drawing attention in Midtown as smoke spread through the area. The fire began in the basement of a high-rise located at West 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue, beneath La Grande Boucherie, as per the New York Post.
The inferno, reported to have begun around 4:50 p.m., sent smoke up through Sixth Avenue and even impacted neighboring buildings, including a media-famous Hilton Hotel, complicating matters as the blaze was mistakenly believed to have originated there, it managed to summon over a hundred fire and EMS responders to the scene. Notably, no injuries were reported from the incident, which saw firefighters quickly gain control within a span of an hour, as detailed by the ABC7NY.
The fire's source, pinpointed to a mechanical room beneath the upscale restaurant, resulted in thick smoke that prompted nearby workers to take precautionary measures. "It was a heavy, plastic smell," Colin Sweeney, who works at a hotel across the street told the New York Post, "You don’t want to smell that" he said, recalling how the fumes pushed him and a colleague to seek shelter indoors after it set off their fire alarm.
The aftermath of the fire was a scene of disruption in Midtown, with smoke obscuring parts of the skyline and leading to the temporary closing off of a public pathway beside La Grande Boucherie; yet amid the chaos, no substantial details have emerged on the extent of the damage to the building, which is comprised largely of office space, according to reports from ABC7NY. The FDNY is continuing its investigation into the cause of the fire, with fire marshals working to determine the sequence of events that resulted in Tuesday’s incident.
