Cops: Fire kills New Hyde Park man

An early-morning house fire killed a 79-year-old New Hyde Park man and injured two firefighters Sunday, Nassau County police said.

Police would not release the victim's name, pending family notification. The man was found in the first-floor living room of his Seventh Avenue home.

He was declared dead at the scene at 3:05 a.m., slightly more than two hours after a neighbor called 911 to report the fire at the two-story wooden structure, Officer Eloise Abdullah said.

The single-family house fire drew 125 firefighters and 15 trucks from seven fire departments. Two firefighters were treated for minor injuries at nearby hospitals, Abdullah said.

The fire is not considered suspicious, Abdullah said, but police investigators and the Nassau County Fire Marshall's Office had not yet determined the cause.

Neighbors called the man "Lee" and said he was a smoker who was in poor health. He used a walker and needed an oxygen tank to help him breathe. He lived alone, neighbors said, and had no local relatives.

Alfred Piotrovsky, 60, who lives in the house next door, said a thunderous explosion awakened him just before 1 a.m.

The front and side of his neighbor's yellow Cape Cod were engulfed in flames, and the windows had shattered, he said.

The victim, recently hospitalized, had returned home last week, Piotrovsky said.

His daughter Suzanne Piotrovsky, 27, helped shovel snow from the man's walkway and brought him groceries. She saw him hours before the fatal fire when she dropped off a sausage sandwich.

"He kept to himself, but if he knew you he would talk a lot. He was a lonely but happy man," Suzanne Piotrovsky said. "So to come out and see your neighbor's house on fire and know he's inside is the worst feeling in the world."

With Reid J. Epstein