Man Who Did His Own Electrical Work Dies in Fire: Officials

NY Post – March 29, 2016

by Kevin Sheehan and Daniel Prendergast

An 88-year-old Queens man who insisted on doing his own electrical work was killed when a fire ripped through his home early Sunday, officials and neighbors said.

It took more than 60 firefighters several hours to beat down the 4:30 a.m. blaze at the two-story home on 87th Street near 25th Avenue in Elmhurst

Smoke-eaters then found Korean War veteran Albert Friedman lying in a back bedroom on the first floor and pulled him from the burning house, but he could not be saved.

EMS workers pronounced him dead at the scene, officials said.

Two firefighters also suffered minor injuries.

Neighbors said Friedman had been living alone since his wife, Marjorie, passed away around two years ago and had become withdrawn since losing her.

The couple had lived in the home for around 50 years and did not have any children.

Maria Gavilan, 49, said the couple survived another fire at the home around three years ago. She suggested that it may have been caused by Friedman’s do-it-yourself electrical work.

“Albert was always fixing the electricity himself,” the neighbor said. “I think that’s what caused the fire the last time, three years ago, when he almost burned down half of my house, too.”

Gavilan said she thinks his shoddy electrical work may have caused this fire as well.

“It’s so terrible. Seeing what happened is very, very sad,’’ she said. “He suffered and burned to death.”

Neighbors said the elderly widower’s only pleasure seemed to come from working on two rusty, old 1964 Buick convertibles in his driveway.

“After his wife passed away . . . he was very depressed and very angry,” Gavilan said.

“He wouldn’t let us help him with anything. People would bring him food and he would scream, ‘No! Go away! I have what I need here.’ ”

She said his wife was “the most outgoing of the two.

“The children of the neighborhood really loved her. She was always buying presents for every child on the block,’’ Gavilan noted.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.