Robert Stolarik for The New York Times  A fire on Saturday at the seven-story building at 346 East 29th Street in Flatbush, Brooklyn, killed a tenant, Mary Feagin, and forced the residents of its 65 apartments to flee.  A retired guidance counselor was killed and more than 100 residents were forced to flee into the chill of a winter night when a wind-whipped fire raced through a seven-story apartment building in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Saturday evening.  Roughly 200 firefighters struggled in the dark for seven hours — from dinnertime Saturday to early Sunday — to control the blaze, at a red-brick apartment house at 346 East 29th Street, which is in a heavily immigrant neighborhood made up mostly of blocks of one- and two-family homes. The firefighters battled temperatures plunging into the 20s and fierce gusts of wind reaching 40 miles per hour that whipped the flames and turned the upper floors into an inferno.  “I looked from the window,” said Fatma Mohassib, 31, who lived on the second floor. “I heard ‘Fire! Fire!’ and I saw everyone leaving, everyone running away.”  The guidance counselor, Mary Feagin, 62, who had worked at a school in Brownsville and headed the tenants association, was found dead in her top-floor apartment after the blaze was declared under control at 1:58 a.m. Sunday. She lived alone, said her nephew, Vincent Hill, 42, who also lived in the building and was driven out by the flames.  Tenants said Ms. Feagin was born and raised in South Carolina and had lived in the building for more than 30 years. They described her as a caring woman who had fought for repairs ever since new management took over the building a decade ago.  Among the problems were inadequate or irregular heat and leaky windows that let cold air seep in, said Samuel Hampton, 61, who has lived in the building for 37 years and was displaced from his fifth-floor apartment by the fire.  A spokesman for the owner, named by tenants as 346 L.L.C., could not immediately be reached for comment.  The 160-foot-wide building, between Clarendon Avenue and Avenue D, was built in 1966 and contains 65 apartments. On Sunday, it was sheathed in ice, its roof and top floor collapsed. The fourth, fifth and sixth floors were also heavily damaged. Only residents on the lower floors were able to retrieve any belongings.  Fire Chief Joseph Duggan said the fire started in the rear of the fourth floor about dinnertime Saturday; fire marshals were still investigating the cause. The first alarm was called in at 6:41 p.m., but more fire companies were called because the wind, Chief Duggan said, created “blowtorch conditions” that quickly spread the fire to the upper floors.  Mr. Hampton said he saw smoke filling the hallways and ran to the fire escape but was not able to grab any of his belongings. Ms. Mohassib said she led her 5-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son out of the building, then went back in to knock on neighbors’ doors and warn them.  Seven residents and 20 firefighters were treated for minor injuries. Four of the firefighters were taken to the burn center at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan with what officials described as minor burns.  Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, charged that staff cuts imposed by the Bloomberg administration three weeks ago had created “serious delays in getting water on this fire.” He said three of the first six engine companies to respond had only four firefighters instead of five, so it took them longer to stretch hose lines. That delay, he said, allowed the fire to grow more rapidly.  Responding to the charge, the Fire Department said in a statement released by City Hall that the real difficulties in fighting the fire were the high winds and an apartment door left open by a fourth-floor tenant, which allowed the fire to spread quickly.  “The first arriving units, which were on the scene in three minutes, never had a chance to extinguish the fire in the original apartment,” the statement said.  “Contrary to the U.F.A.’s statement, it was the open-door problem — greatly exacerbated by severe winds — that fueled this fire into an unstoppable conflagration,” the Fire Department said.  Ms. Mohassib stayed with relatives Saturday night. Early Sunday, the police let her back into her apartment, from which she took a large red duffel bag and two backpacks stuffed with her children’s clothes, their schoolwork and other belongings.  “My home is destroyed,” she said.  Nineteen families — including 11 children — spent the night at two Brooklyn hotels, while at least seven families stayed with relatives. John Cruz, a senior supervisor with the American Red Cross, said the organization planned to house 15 families Sunday night at two Brooklyn hotels.  Chief Duggan said he did not know if or when tenants on lower floors might be able to return to sleep in their homes. Though many tenants were able to visit on Sunday morning to retrieve clothes and, in one case, a poodle that had hidden under the bed in a second-floor apartment, Mr. Hampton’s apartment had been so badly damaged that he did not know if anything salvageable was left. He planned on staying with a sister who lived nearby.  “I lost everything,” he said. “I don’t even have my ID.”
The Fire Department said that the fire began on the fourth floor, and an open door allowed it to spread.