Tenant Injured in Battery Park City Building Fire

A resident of the Tribeca Pointe apartment building in northern Battery Park City was severely injured by a fire in his 30th-floor apartment in the early afternoon of Sept. 24. Firefighters forced open the door of Alfred K. Rizzolo's apartment and pulled him out at about 1:15 p.m. He was conscious when he was placed into an ambulance and sent to the burn center at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center. He arrived at the hospital in critical condition and remained in critical condition on Sept. 27, a hospital administrator said. No other tenants were reported injured. But Rizzolo’s black cat was also rescued. A firefighter rushed the cat from the building wrapped in a cloth, and the cat was given oxygen on the scene before being sent to a Cat Menders, a veterinarian at Hudson and Duane streets. The cat suffered from smoke inhalation but a couple of days later was "doing fine and eating well," according to an assistant at the veterinary office, where the cat will probably remain until Rizzolo can be contacted. The fire was discovered after a resident of the the building, at 41 River Terrace, smelled smoke and called the lobby desk. A doorman and the building manager went up to the 30th floor and saw smoke coming out of Rizzolo's apartment, number 3005, and called the fire department just before 1 p.m.

		Because the fire was in a high-rise building, more than a dozen Fire Department vehicles, including eight fire trucks, responded. Fire marshalls were investigating the cause of the fire. Battalion1 Fire Chief Ron Schmutzler said that the fire started in Rizzolo’s kitchen. He said that when firefighters arrived, there was heavy smoke in the apartment as well as smoke in the hallways, but the fire did not spread to other apartments. But apartments on the three floors below the fire suffered water damage.