Apartment Look

GUILDERLAND — Early Sunday morning, software programmer Premjeet Sougrakpam was at home, sleeping in his Regency Park apartment , as were his wife, her mother, and the couple’s two sons — one of them three years old and the other born just five days earlier.  They were awakened by a loud bang at about 4:30 a.m. When they ran to a back window to see if something was wrong, they saw flames outside, near their patio. Sougrakpam reached for a phone and called 911, while the women each grabbed one of the children. They made their way outside, where residents from the other nearby apartments were also gathering.  “I came barefooted, just the pajama, and the phone I had used to dial 911,” said Sougrakpam.  There was no time to get anything else, not even car keys or passports, he said. The Sougrakpams lived in Building 1 of the complex at 2120 Western Ave. There were six apartments in their building. Sougrakpam told The Enterprise that he is currently in a local hotel; his family — includin...

GARDINER — Fire heavily damaged a two- story apartment building at 33 Spring St. in Gardiner Tuesday , leaving about eight people homeless. No one was injured in the blaze that was reported around 10:12 a.m. and appeared to originate on the first floor. By 11 a.m., firefighters from Gardiner and multiple surrounding communities had knocked down the bulk of the fire, but they continued to look for hot spots for more than an hour after that, removing sections of the building to do so. “It’s a terrible loss,” said Sharon Geroux, one of the building’s co-owners. Choking up, she continued, “The building was not even the biggest loss. My cat’s dead, I’m sure. I couldn’t get her out of there. There was so much smoke.” Two families were living the complex, which included four apartment units and a beauty salon that was operated by Geroux, 56. Sharon Geroux lived in one of the first-floor units with her 59-year-old husband, Richard Geroux. Her 80-year-old mother lived in a separate unit and...

Nearly every day, Kristen Bass travels to the Park Meridian apartments in Northgate, seeking reassurance that important pieces of her life are still intact. The 30- unit apartment building where she lived for 18 months was badly damaged in an Aug. 5 fire, leaving Bass and about 70 other tenants searching for new homes while the insurance company documents the extent of the damage, and the landlord makes plans for the building’s demolition. Bass is certain that irreplaceable belongings survived the fire — her family photos, childhood mementos, and a box of her late sister’s belongings that she can’t talk about without breaking into tears. But she can’t retrieve them from the fenced and partially boarded-up building because the landlord says it’s not safe to let her back inside. Most Read Stories Unlimited Digital Access. $1 for 4 weeks. “We are so grateful no one got hurt,’’ building owner A. Mark Vanderveen said in an interview Monday. “The last thing I want to do is put someone ...