Baldwinsville, NY Firefighters Tackle House Fire; No Injuries Reported

Baldwinsville, N.Y. — Stuart Hayes was in his first-floor bedroom watching the end of the Buffalo Bills vs Minnesota Vikings NFL game on TV when he heard a couple of thuds come from upstairs.

At first, he didn’t think much of it. But then, about two minutes later, at 4:38 p.m., the smoke detectors alarmed.

Hayes, a local pastor, said he walked up the stairs of his home at 51 Oswego St. in the village of Baldwinsville and knocked on a door to make sure everyone knew to get out. The smoke was growing by the second.

Robert Emerson, an upstairs tenant, opened his door carrying a towel and invited Hayes inside.

“Robert said he was sitting in his bathroom with a wet towel over his head trying to deal with the smoke,” Hayes recalled of their conversation. “I told Robert he was nuts to stay up there and he had to get out of there.”

Hayes opened the door to the other apartment after no one answered, but he said the smoke was too much to enter.

Hayes quickly headed downstairs. He grabbed his dog, Maddie, a Border Collie, her leash and his cell phone, and walked out to the front porch. To his relief, Emerson had also made his way downstairs and out to the porch.

Within minutes, Baldwinsville police and firefighters had arrived. Flames were now shooting out the second-floor windows, said Jeff Belczak, an assistant chief with the North West Fire District.

Hayes told police he thought someone might still be inside. Baldwinsville police then told the North West Fire District chiefs on scene someone might be trapped in a second floor apartment. They quickly went upstairs and searched the apartment, but no one was inside, Belczak said.

Police called the man staying in the apartment where the fire started. When he answered the phone, the man told police he wasn’t there. Brandon Leonard, 33, returned to find the house that he had just moved into on fire. There were tears in his eyes as he told The Post-Standard | syracuse.com how his friend had moved him into her apartment last Wednesday. He said he previously lived at the Catholic Charities men’s shelter in Syracuse for the last several months. Leonard said his friend asked him to stay and help her because she was sick. Hayes confirmed his tenant, Samantha Velez, has been ill and that Leonard recently started staying at the house. Velez was not home when the fire started because a couple hours earlier, she was taken by ambulance to a Syracuse hospital, both Leonard and Hayes said.

Dozens of firefighters spent 45 minutes battling the fire, and remained on scene for about four hours, Belczak said.

Firefighters found one cat dead inside the house; Hayes said three other cats and one small dog are still missing Sunday night.

The American Red Cross gave Hayes some Cheetos to eat and a sweatshirt after the fire. Hayes said he was going to stay with his ex-wife, Jill Hayes, who also owns the house that caught fire.

Marlo Ackerman, who works with Emerson at the Mohegan Manor in Baldwinsville, said their boss Dennis Sick is helping Emerson so he has a place to stay. The Red Cross also was helping Emerson, Hayes said.

Ackerman said she lives nearby and saw people running through the Mohegan Manor parking lot when the fire started.

“As soon as I opened the front door, I could smell the smoke,” she said. “I ran to the top of the street and by then I could see flames shooting out 15 feet in the air.”

Ackerman started recording the fire on her cell phone and cried as she asked if her friend got out safely. Emerson was OK. So was everyone else, firefighters said. But Emerson said he didn’t think his three cats survived. The other cat and dog that were missing lived in Velez’s apartment.

Hayes, a pastor who retired from First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville in 2017 and is now bridge pastor of Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church in DeWitt, said he was glad everyone got out safely although he is sad for the animals that died in the fire. He and his ex-wife, Jill Hayes, bought the house in the fall of 1993. At the time, 51 Oswego St. was a law office. Before that, it was a pediatrician’s office. The Hayes family renovated the home into a residence, where they raised their three children. Eventually they began renting two apartments upstairs, one with four rooms and the other with three rooms, Hayes said.

Last June, Hayes said he added additional smoke and carbon monoxide detectors after speaking with Baldwinsville’s codes inspector. While he didn’t get to finish watching the final minutes of the football game — he later heard from someone the Vikings defeated the Bills 33-30 in overtime — Hayes said he was glad the smoke detectors worked Sunday.

The fire appears to have started in one of second-floor apartments, where most of the smoke and fire damage was found, Belczak said. Hayes said Velez rented that apartment, but that Leonard was also staying there for the last few days.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

The North West Fire District; Lakeside, Liverpool, Solvay, Belgium Cold Springs, Phoenix, Moyers Corners and Taunton fire departments; as well as the Greater Baldwinsville Ambulance Corps (GBAC) and the Baldwinsville Police Department responded to the scene. Onondaga County Emergency Management, National Grid, an Onondaga County sheriff’s deputy, a state trooper, county fire investigators and the American Red Cross also were at the scene.

It was not immediately clear if the Red Cross or someone else was helping Leonard; Velez remains in the hospital, Hayes said.

The damage from the fire was significant; Hayes said firefighters told him to let his insurance company know it was a “major loss.”

As firefighters continued to extinguish flames from the second story of the house, Leonard sat on a curb and cried. He said he has lived on the streets, on and off since he was 19 years old. He said he moved his few belongings into his friend’s apartment four days ago.

“I don’t have a lot,” he said, “but I lost everything.”

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