HOLYOKE — Fire ripped through a Holyoke apartment building Sunday morning, leaving one woman dead and about 45 people without homes on New Year’s Day.
Investigators were still searching for two people who may have been in the building but, as of 5:30 p.m. Sunday, were unaccounted for.
Crews responded to the five-story building, at the intersection of North East Street and East Dwight Street, at about 8:45 a.m. Raquel Rodriguez, the property manager, said 25 units were affected by the blaze. Ronald Dietrich, chief of the Holyoke auxiliary police, said approximately 29 families and 45 people lost their homes.
The woman who died, whom authorities did not identify Sunday, leapt or fell to her death from the upper floors of the building, witnesses said.
Capt. Anthony Cerruti, spokesman for the Holyoke Fire Department, said Sunday evening the cause of the fire was still unknown and that the state fire marshal’s office was helping investigate. The building is a total loss, he said.
He said demolition crews knocked down part of the building to help firefighters locate anyone who may have been trapped in the inferno.
Witnesses gave dramatic accounts of the scene Sunday morning.
Zulimar Maldomado, 25, said she was visiting her mother’s home in an apartment building down the street from the fire. She said her mom’s neighbors alerted the two.
She said she saw papers and bags flying out the windows.
“That’s all I saw until all the cops and everything swarmed in,” she said.
She said the upper three floors of the building became engulfed.
Eddie Gonzalez, 29, said he saw the fire from his nearby apartment.
“My girl runs out to the room, she’s like, ‘Babe, babe, somebody’s yelling outside, something’s happening,’” Gonzalez said. “And as soon as I opened my curtain I could feel the heat and I just saw the flames.”
He said before first responders arrived, two babies were dropped from the building.
“Two people tossed a baby down and they caught him in blankets,” he said, clarifying he saw this happen twice. When asked who caught the baby, he said, “The citizens, people from here, from the block.”
Cerruti said crews rescued approximately five people trapped in the upper floors of the building via aerial ladder. He said there were four to six injuries, with two people treated for smoke inhalation. He didn’t have details on the other injuries.
Cerruti said he couldn’t identify the woman who died, referring questions about her identity to the district attorney’s office. Representatives from the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office could not be reached Sunday.
State Fire Marshal Peter Ostroskey said late Sunday evening the cause of the fire remains undetermined.
Away from the fire, at the nearby Dr. Marcella R. Kelly School, building residents who woke up to the blaze were consoling each other and looking through donated clothing as workers with the American Red Cross took account of all those who lost their homes.
Maria Caban said she, her husband Jose, daughter Ashley and pet chihuahua Goofy lived on the fourth floor of the complex.
“My husband woke me up and there was already smoke,” she said in Spanish, through a translator. “People screaming. ‘I’m burning. Help me.’ They couldn’t go down.”
Caban said she escaped the building down the stairs through the front of the building. She said everything in the apartment was gone.
“There was a lot of smoke, a lot of water,” Ashley Caban, 11, said. “The fire was like literally next to our apartment.”
Michael Arroyo, 20, lived on the second floor of the building.
“My mom just woke me up screaming and I just got out,” he said. He first thought it was a drill or a false alarm. “But when I saw everybody crying, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is real.’”
Mary Nathan, western Massachusetts disaster program manager for the American Red Cross, said the agency is working with families, city officials and the property management company, Naviah Investments LLC, to try to find places for people to stay.
“(And) the Red Cross will assist them with other needs that they’re going to have, like food and clothing and that type of thing,” she said. “So right now it’s a lot of quick conversations with the city officials and the management company to try to determine the most basic needs.”
Holyoke Mayor Alex B. Morse has set up a GoFundMe page for victims of the fire.
Jack Suntrup can be contacted at jsuntrup@gazettenet.com.