by John M. Annese
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. --- The heavy snow that blanketed Staten Island last weekend wrecked havoc on a New Brighton block, knocking trees into a power transformer and sparking a fire that left three families homeless.
The blaze happened at about 3:45 a.m. Friday at 187 York Ave. The snowfall had weighed down an already low-hanging cluster of trees on York Avenue, sending them crashing into a utility pole in front of 191 York.
That snapped the pole and sent the transformer plummeting, neighbors said. "It hit my house and bounced off of my house and onto my husband's truck," said Claudia Beadle, who lives at 191 York.
The downed, sparking wires hit the side of 187 York, neighbors recalled, lighting part of the three-family house ablaze.
Fire officials said the blaze damaged the first and second floors of the building, and firefighters needed to remove three people from inside. No one was injured in the blaze, an FDNY spokesman said.
Earlier today, the windows of the house remained boarded up, and the smell of wet, charred wood still permeated the air.
LOST EVERYTHING
Outside, Oakwood resident Susan Melendez waited while her mother-in-law, Luisa Pineiro, 58, and father-in-law, Julio Melendez, 65, surveyed the damage to the house. The couple live in a basement apartment and, Ms. Melendez said, lost everything in the blaze.
"I'm actually waiting for the Red Cross," she said, adding that she had just taken the older couple to the FDNY's Metrotech Center in Brooklyn, then the Red Cross' office in Manhattan, and was now awaiting the arrival of a Red Cross worker.
"It's a terrible situation," she said. "They don't have anything. They have the jackets on their backs."
For now, she said, they're staying with her in Oakwood.
Several neighbors said they'd called in multiple complaints to 311 and city agencies about the low-hanging trees, but to no avail.
"These trees have been hanging here for years," said Gilbert Hyman, who lives up the block at 181 York Ave.
Added Ms. Beadle, "That could have been avoided."
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