Close call for firefighters at Selden funeral home blaze

Firefighters battling flames at the Giove Funeral Home in Selden escaped just two minutes before the ceiling of the upstairs apartment collapsed late Tuesday night, fire officials said.

Barking dogs alerted the residents at the decades-old family business; they all escaped safely, according to authorities.

The blaze caused extensive damage to the second floor at the funeral home, a community fixture. It took the efforts of about 100 firefighters to extinguish it, according to the Selden Fire Department.

The fire was called in by a Selden ambulance crew on its way to a hospital; an automatic alarm was triggered at about 11 p.m.

Photographs show firefighters combating towering rooftop flames, several times their height, which engulfed almost the entire surface.

Funeral home workers, who had left shortly before the fire began, came back and removed the sole coffin to a safe location, the Selden Fire Department said.

The owners of the business could not be immediately reached for comment.

It wasn't immediately known how many people were displaced by the fire. A Red Cross representative said the agency was in the process of connecting with those displaced.

The fire evidently broke out in the upstairs apartment and its ceiling.

"Under the Command of Chief of the Department William Cotty, an initial interior attack was hampered and aborted as the ceiling of the apartment began to collapse on the firefighters," the fire department said.

"At this time all manpower was removed from the building just two minutes before the roof collapsed into the apartment," it added.

Firefighters then concentrated on the exterior of the building, which was extensively damaged.

Apparatus and support vehicles from five other fire departments — Coram, Centereach, Ronkonkoma, Holtsville and Farmingville — joined Selden, bringing the blaze under control in just over an hour, the Selden Fire Department said.

Brookhaven Town fire marshals and Suffolk's arson squad will investigate what caused the blaze.