by TANANGACHI MFUNI and JONATHAN LEMIRE
A three-alarm fire sparked by a man who fell asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand injured five people and forced the evacuation of a Bronx apartment building early Wednesday.
The blaze swept through a five-story building on Honeywell Ave. in East Tremont just after 1:30 a.m. and escalated to three alarms within the hour as smoke filled the structure's hallways and flames shot out its windows.
"The firefighters knocked on my door," said Carmen Seise, 39, who, along with her two children, fled her apartment. "The firemen said, 'Go! Leave!'
"That smoke was black - dark, dark," Seise added, describing a hallway filled with choking smoke. "I was crying. I couldn't see. I was suffocating."
The fire began in one of the building's fifth-floor apartments after its occupant dozed off while smoking, an FDNY source said.
Many of the residents of that floor said they had no warning of the fire.
"The fire alarm didn't go off; the sprinkler didn't go off," said 43-year-old Ada Diaz, whose apartment was damaged by the flames.
Diaz's son said his family escaped only because a neighbor ran down the hallway banging on doors.
"I got out because one of our neighbors came and woke us up and got us out of the house," said John Cardona, 19, who lives next door to the apartment where the fire started.
Four firefighters and one of the building's residents were taken to Jacobi Medical Center with minor injuries, an FDNY spokesman said.
The fire was declared under control at 3:20 a.m., officials said.
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