Living room lamp suspected in fire

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TUCKAHOE, NY - Although the house that has been in his wife's family for three generations was gutted by fire the day before Christmas, Henry Norman Jr. considered himself lucky yesterday as he picked through its charred remains.

"It was a blessing," said the lifelong Tuckahoe resident and MTA bus operator. "We're still alive."

Norman found his and his wife's Christmas presents intact, along with the collard greens they planned to bring to Christmas dinner.

Standing in his burned-out dining room, he sifted through the debris for a few belongings. The blades of a ceiling fan drooped from the heat of yesterday's flames and not a window was left. Sheet rock had melted from the walls in the living room, and all that remained of the sofas was a pile of metal coils.

When the fire started at 4:19 p.m., Norman, the son of a former Tuckahoe police chief, said he was upstairs and his wife, Irene, a postal worker at the Harrison mail distribution center, was cooking him a steak in the kitchen.

He said a power surge caused a 40-year-old living room lamp to catch fire, spreading in seconds throughout the downstairs and into the floor of the upstairs bedrooms.