by JOHN ANNESE
Flames spreading from a burning television gutted the second floor of an Annadale house yesterday morning, sending five firefighters to the hospital with minor injuries. A man and a teenage girl inside the house escaped unharmed. The blaze started at about 10:24 a.m., when a faulty TV caught fire in a second-story room at 17 Ruxton Ave., according to FDNY officials. Rocco Cursi, the homeowner's brother-in-law, said he was inside, painting, when "all of a sudden, I see smoke upstairs." He heard a series of pops and ran up to check on his niece, Rosemary Battezzato, who was in another room upstairs, and asked her what was going on. The teen went to check on the room with the TV, he said. "She opened the door, and the smoke came out," Cursi said. That's when the two ran out of the house. The flames curled out the second-story window and set the house's attic and roof on fire, according to Division 8 Deputy Chief Kevin Corrigan. "That front room is a total burnout," Corrigan said of the bedroom with the TV. Fourteen FDNY units arrived to fight the blaze, extinguishing it about a half-hour later. They later attached a plastic sheet over what was left of one second-story window. Outside, the stunned homeowners and their family members stood and watched, as their neighbors consoled them. "Devastated, devastated," murmured Anna Cursi, Rocco's wife and the sister of homeowner Peter Battezzato, as she held her hands to her face and watched firefighters pull down parts of the attic, looking for hidden pockets of fire. Mrs. Cursi said she had just left the house to get some more paint for her husband when the fire started.
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