A 50-year-old woman suffered burns and a broken bone after jumping from a third-floor window to escape a fire that tore through a multi-family home in Elizabeth, New Jersey, early Sunday morning. Firefighters found her in the rear driveway of 470 Jefferson Avenue after the blaze broke out around 7:30 a.m. and quickly escalated to three alarms, drawing more than a dozen fire units and chiefs to the scene.
The woman was initially taken to University Hospital in Newark before being transferred to St. Barnabas Hospital, according to ABC7 Eyewitness News. That routing reflects standard regional trauma protocol: University Hospital operates the Eric Muñoz Trauma Center, Northern New Jersey's only state-designated Level I Trauma Center, which handles more than 100,000 emergency cases a year, according to University Hospital Newark. Her subsequent transfer points toward the Burn Center at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey's sole state-certified burn treatment facility, which runs a 12-bed intensive care unit and an 18-bed step-down unit and treats more than 350 severe burn patients annually from across the state, per RWJBarnabas Health.
Flames Spread Along the Rear of the Building
Firefighters arriving at the scene received reports of people trapped inside as flames spread from the first floor along the rear of the building, ultimately destroying parts of the multi-family home, officials said. The fire caused exterior heat and flame damage to a neighboring multi-family home as well, the report notes. The report does not provide details about the height or relative position of neighboring buildings.
Property records reviewed by Yardi Matrix show 470 Jefferson Avenue is a 25,075-square-foot apartment building built in 1930 containing 51 residential units. The building's age and scale are documented in those records.
At Least Seven Residents Displaced
Fire officials said at least seven residents are expected to be displaced by the blaze, which was brought under control but remains under investigation. The precise origin point of the rear, first-floor fire has not been determined. Reports did not state whether all smoke alarms in the building were functioning at the time.
The response drew on the Elizabeth Fire Department. Major structural fires in the city can also pull in extra engines, ladders, and chief officers through the Union County Fire Mutual Aid system, with the Union County 9-1-1 Dispatch Center identified as its headquarters, according to the County of Union New Jersey.
A Recent Pattern of Major Fires
This is not the first major multi-alarm fire to strain Elizabeth's fire crews this year. Less than three months earlier, on June 19, firefighters battled another three-alarm blaze that broke out in the attic of a three-story residential building near Mary Street and Adams Avenue, according to RLS Media.
The sources do not establish Elizabeth's statewide rank, population, population density or the distribution of multi-family housing across its neighborhoods. Sunday's fire shows how a blaze at one building can ripple outward, threatening neighboring homes and displacing multiple households at once. It remains unclear what long-term housing assistance will be available to the displaced residents.
