Video captures harrowing escape from fire in Edgewater

EDGEWATER — A harrowing scene took place in Edgewater on Monday night as children from a dance studio were dropped from a second-floor balcony before firefighters arrived at a four-alarm blaze on Old River Road.

The video was captured by a bystander and posted to social media.

A group of young girls and at least one adult were huddled, screaming, on a second-floor balcony above a carwash while flames raged out the windows just a few feet behind them, according to a short video posted to the Facebook group Life in Edgewater and later on YouTube.

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In the video, a group of men can be seen hoisting ladders toward the balcony and managing to carry down at least one girl. But the flames became too intense, and the adults started dropping girls to the ground, where some landed and some were caught. Some of the girls ran away from the scene screaming.

"Five people have been transported to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries," Edgewater Fire Chief Steve Curry said from the scene. Curry believes everyone was accounted for in the fire, which started around 6:45 p.m. at the rear of the building on the first floor.

Mayor Michael McPartland said, "We were very fortunate here tonight."

He credited Officer James Dalton and local businessman Tony Nehme for helping catch the girls who were trapped on the second-floor balcony.

"It was one of the bravest things I've ever seen," McPartland said.

He said the building housed a carwash, a restaurant, an auto body shop, a health spa and a dance studio for children on the second floor. The building was extensively damaged, but Curry said he was unsure if it was a total loss.

"It’s a miracle with the heavy fire we had on arrival that everyone got out the way they did," he said.

Sisters Melissa Donmez, 19, and Miray Donmez, 17, live five minutes away and said they went to the restaurant all the time.

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“It was pretty crazy,” Melissa Donmez said of the people jumping to safety.

She described the restaurant as a “nice, friendly environment.”

"It’s kind of heartbreaking to see what happened here,” she said.

The Bergen County Sheriff’s Office and the Fort Lee, Fairview, Ridgefield and Palisades Park fire departments responded.