The UES Stinks of Smoke Due to Massive Fire in New Jersey

A massive, five-alarm fire that sparked early Wednesday morning in West New York, New Jersey and quickly spread to multiple buildings is to blame for the thick, acrid smell of smoke blanketing the Upper East Side whether you are at street level or hundreds of feet up in a high-rise.

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“Whatever is going happening on the Upper East Side sounds and smells serious,” Meg Floss wrote on Twitter, “I thought my building was on fire about an hour ago.”

Upper East Side residents tell Upper East Site they woke to the smell of smoke so strong inside their own apartments they believed the smoke may have been coming from inside their building.

“I could smell it inside my apartment!” said Upper East Sider Paola Suarez, “I was going to text the super so he can check because I thought maybe there’s a fire in another unit”

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From news helicopters, heavy smoke could be seen billowing east from a row of buildings on Bergenline Avenue near 61st Street in West New York — a town that sits directly across the Hudson River from the Upper West Side — as firefighters battled giant flames shooting from the structures for hours this morning.

A photo taken around 6:30 am shows a haze in the sky over Central Park caused by the smoke blowing across Manhattan, while an Upper West Sider shared air quality measurements inside his West 70th street apartment which showed a spike in unhealthy levels of particulate matter indoors after 6:00 am.

Just after 8:30 am, the Hudson County Regional Arson Task Force announced it was responding to the fire.

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