First responders were searching Monday afternoon for an elderly man missing after fire consumed a home in the Long Island town of Island Park in the early morning.
The blaze broke out just before 2 a.m. and quickly escalated into a three-alarm fire, “due to the magnitude of fire and proximity of the neighboring property,” the Island Park Volunteer Fire Department said in a statement. It was intense enough to catch the siding of the house next door, ABC News reported.
Firefighters from Long Beach, Point Lookout, Lido, Oceanside, Baldwin, Freeport, East Rockaway, Lynbrook and other towns responded, the department said. In all, it took 90 minutes for 120 firefighters from 10 departments to put out the flames, News 12 Long Island reported.
On Monday heavy machinery was brought in to comb through the home’s rubble, News 12 Long Island reported. At first it was believed that two elderly people were in the house when it started, but determined later that a woman they thought was there had not been. Police were not certain whether the man was inside, and were proceeding slowly, ABC News reported.
Search efforts were complicated by an inordinate amount of clutter that was adding to the debris, police told News 12. Weather conditions made the fire tough to tackle, Nassau County Fire Marshal Michael Uttaro told ABC News, though there was a chance it could also explain the cause.
“There were storms in the area, high winds, there were thunderstorms, so we’re trying to look at lightning strikes, all other types of electrical emergencies, transformers, etc.,” he said.
Across the street, Maggie Stovickova said although she had “smelled a fireplace” but that “it wasn’t normal,” prompting her to look out the window to see her neighbor’s house on fire, she told ABC News.
“He’s a good man,” an unidentified neighbor told News 12. “Sorry it happened. Breaks my heart, it really does.”