UWS Fire Leaves Family Searching For A Home In Coronavirus Crisis

UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN — Last week, Alena Williams was on a rare trip out of her apartment with her fiancé and their 2-year-old son when she got an alarming call from a neighbor — their apartment building was on fire.

Williams and her family raced back home, praying their second-floor apartment had stayed safe from the flames, which had broken out on the fifth floor of the West 101st Street building.

But, they soon found out that wasn't the case.

"You had to hold on to be able to walk up the stairs — there was water raining down from the ceiling," Williams said. "It was completely flooded."

The three-alarm fire, which would injure seven people, had started in the apartment directly above Williams', three floors up.

Water poured on the flames by more than 30 firefighter crews had seeped into her family's home, soaking electronics and appliances, ruining clothes in their closets and bringing kitchen cabinets tumbling from the walls. What wasn't flooded, was ruined by smoke, Williams said.

The devastation has left Williams and at least 10 other displaced neighbors in a precarious position: searching for a home during a stay-at-home order.

Alena Williams and her son, William. (Courtesy of Alena Williams).

Williams, who has asthma and recently found out she is pregnant, went from what she saw as a small, low-risk apartment building into a Midtown "corona hotel," filled with essential workers and elderly who were moved there from nursing homes.

"We had been staying clear," Williams said. "This is a time where everybody has utilized their homes and has been staying in their houses to stay safe — now we're forced out of our house."

The West 101st Street residents time at the hotel, which was paid for by the Red Cross, is set to run out at the end of the week.

She and her fiancé, both laid off from their jobs at a restaurant and a gym, have spent the week searching for a place to go and starting a GoFundMe to help.

"We are now homeless in the middle of a global pandemic," Williams wrote on the fundraiser. "...While we are happy to be alive, we are starting all over again from scratch."

Money raised in the fundraiser will help Williams, her fiancé Claude Jenkins and their son William replace what they lost in the fire — all but a handful of baby clothes, underwear and socks — and find a new apartment.

Williams' fiancé, Claude Jenkins, with their son, William. (Courtesy of Alena Williams).

So far the search has been difficult, Williams said, given a slim picking of affordable options in the neighborhood they've grown to call home.

Willams and Jenkins both only started receiving unemployment payments a few weeks ago thanks to a backlogged system collapsing under the stress of the coronavirus pandemic.

The family is at least the second person from the building to seek help online. Anthony Trotter, a 26-year-old youth counselor, raised $17,000 earlier this week after his top-floor apartment was destroyed.

Williams said the apartment building has given little indication of when or if the apartments will be fixed. Three or four apartments have to be completely gutted and others only recently got power back, she said.

"The D, E and F [apartments] are destroyed," she said. "I've never experienced anything like this before."