Century 21 Fire Brings Afternoon Shopping to a Halt

Would-be shoppers at the entrance to Century 21 are told that the store is closed due to a fire. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

A fire broke out in the sub-basement of the Century 21 Department Store, 22 Cortlandt St., at around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday causing no injuries but forcing hundreds of shoppers and store employees to evacuate.

The blaze, which the Fire Department extinguished in about 10 minutes, was contained to an elevator motor room, officials said. Approximately 75 firefighters rushed to the scene, but only one line was needed to put out the flames, FDNY assistant chief Ronald Spadafora told reporters outside the building, following the incident.

“The fire’s under control, and at this time...no occupants of the building have reported any type of injury,” he said. In addition to the handline, he said, “we also used fans to diminish some of the smoke in the building’s lowest levels.”

The blaze, Spadafora noted, caused very little damage beyond the immediate area of the fire. He estimated that about 200 people evacuated the building.

As of 5 p.m., the cause of the blaze had yet to be determined, according to an FDNY spokesperson. A Century 21 spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Firefighters and their apparatus were staged on streets surrounding the building, snarling traffic on Broadway and other nearby streets and blocking the sidewalks directly adjacent to the store.

Janet Albano was one of scores of shoppers who followed firefighters’ orders and filed out of the store’s first-floor entrance on Church Street. At about 4:15 p.m., she was still waiting to get back in to buy a pocketbook she had noticed before evacuating.

All the firemen came in with the hoses, she said, “and the next thing you know, they were just evacuating the building.”

Albano, who was in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, said she wasn’t fazed by the incident. “This was nothing,” she said. “They seemed like they had a handle on it...they moved everyone pretty quickly.”

Shirley Groves, from Essex, England, was on the store’s third floor when she smelled smoke and heard orders, over a loudspeaker, to leave the building. “The smoke alarms kept going off...and then we had to evacuate,” she said.

Groves, who was returning to England on July 4, said she would wait outside until the store allowed people back in—which a store official said would be before 5 p.m.

“I want to go back for more shopping!” she said.