by Joe Jackson and Jonathan Lemire
Three elderly people were rescued Friday after their Brooklyn apartment was consumed by a fast-moving fire, officials said.
The two-alarm blaze ignited in the sixth-floor Gravesend apartment at 2:45 a.m., sending residents scrambling for safety and firefighters racing to help.
"I was so scared, I was crying," said Miriam Braunfeld, 61, who lived in the building for 46 years. "I heard glass breaking and saw all the water, but then a nice fireman took me down."
FDNY investigators said the blaze - sparked by an overloaded electrical socket - quickly spread from the apartment to the roof, endangering everyone inside the Colby Court building.
"I smelled smoke through the AC," said Svetlana Larionova, 16, who lives on the fifth floor.
"I looked up and saw really bright, big fire," she said. "The whole window was in flames."
Firefighters burst into the burning apartment and rushed three people to Coney Island Hospital. The victims, whose names were not released, suffered burns and smoke inhalation but were expected to survive, officials said.
There were no working smoke detectors in the apartment in which the fire started, FDNY officials said.
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