Victims of Sunnyside, Queens apartment building fire struggling to come to grips with losing everything
NEW YORK -- Displaced tenants of the Queens building that caught fire last week got a look Thursday at their destroyed apartments for the first time. Some even said their homes were burglarized.
Tahlya Loveday broke down as she walked through her fifth-floor burned-out apartment.
"It smelled like toxic smoke everywhere," Loveday said. "Nothing was salvageable. It was disgusting."
Loveday is one of hundreds of tenants of the Sunnyside building now displaced after a fire ripped through the top floors last week.
"I've been staying in Woodside with my mom," Lauren Lanzaro said. "I have no possessions. She took me in."
Lanzaro lived on the sixth floor. She said she hasn't even had a chance to see her apartment.
"I don't have a roof over my apartment due to the damage, so this rain has been painstaking," Lanzaro said.
If that wasn't enough, some said their apartments were looted, including Loveday missing a priceless diamond ring her father gave her for her birthday.
"My jewelry box was closed. Everything was in there, except this diamond ring," Loveday said, adding when asked if she is sure it was in there, "I'm 100% positive it was in there. It's where I always keep it."
Julian Vallejo is missing four watches and his phone.
"I tracked it in 87 and 37th in Queens. It was in my apartment. I remember I left it that day," Vallejo said.
And then there's the question of what's next for the nearly 450 residents who lost their homes. A & E Real Estate, which owns the building, said it's offering alternative apartments in its other buildings in Kew Gardens and Harlem. That's not a feasible option for a tenant named Ourabah, who has school-aged children, including one with autism.
"You can't change the school. I can't. I can't. I got to be right here at this school," Ourabah said.
The fire marshals determined the fire started inside a sixth-floor apartment after a contractor was improperly using a torch. CBS New York has learned that contractor has now received additional violations for illegally storing materials and failure to provide safety oversight.
