It is getting a lot uglier in New York over social media use by those in public safety. Today’s article by Candace M. Giove and Brad Hamilton in the New York Post takes the problem of Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome (SMACSS) in FDNY EMS beyond the fire commissioner’s son and the lieutenant with the racist tweets.
PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING: My prediction is this article will be national news by tomorrow and will have reverberations across the country on the use of social media by fire, EMS and police. If you have a similar problem in your own department, my suggestion is to take care of it now before it becomes news. There will soon be reporters everywhere looking for this.
Here’s how the article begins:
The Bad Lieutenant is part of a sick clique.
In addition to uploading racist rants and Nazi nonsense, EMS Lt. Timothy Dluhos also posted pictures of patients, including one of a heavy-set woman with a snarky caption Photoshopped over her wheelchair: “Wide Load.”
Publicizing photos of the ill, injured or dead without permission is a violation of city rules and federal privacy laws, but some first responders can’t resist snapping shots of people they’re supposed to be helping.
The photos of grisly corpses, gruesome wounds or humiliating circumstances provide fodder for mocking and gawking.
You may recall last Sunday’s story where reporter Candace Giove confronted Lt. Dluhos about his hate filled tweets. That’s when Lt. Dluhos, who is now suspended without pay, broke down and cried over the possibility of losing his job. Since then people claiming to be supporters of the lieutenant have targeted Candace Giove with a series of hate filled messages and death threats. Here is an excerpt from the New York Post article by Brad Hamilton:
On Wednesday night, Footer and P-Rock, hosts of an online radio program called “The Red Show,” poured out their admiration for Dluhos.
“I love him,” gushed P-Rock. “He’s a brave motherf–ker, but in the end he’s going to come out fine . . . He’s been cornered as a racist, and that’s not true. Tim’s our guy.”
“The guy’s getting railroaded here,” remarked Footer.
Dluhos called in to thank the radio show for its support. The two hosts then took pot shots at Giove. “Like I said to that dumb c—, ‘He’s out there saving lives!’ ” said Footer.
Then the hosts tried to guess the reporter’s ethnicity: “For me she looked a little yellow, like Middle Eastern. I don’t think she should be allowed to carry a backpack.”
Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome (SMACSS) seems to be a big problem these days. A week after exposing the tweets that resulted in the resignation from FDNY EMS of the son of Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano, The New York Post is at it again. This time they confronted EMS Lt. Timothy Dluhos about a series of ”racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and anti-Asian comments” on his Twitter feed. Lt. Dluhos broke down and cried.
Susan Edelman and Candace M. Giove wrote they met up with Dluhos on Friday in front of his home. Dluhos is 34-years-old and assigned to the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. He told the reporters he was sorry and his life is ruined.
In his tweets, Dluhos referred to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as “King Jew” and “King Heeb”.
* “I’m going to give up racial insults for Lent,” he tweeted Feb. 12. “Jesus that didn’t [last] too long. F–ken chinks can’t drive.”
* “Hahaha! I work with the coloreds,” he wrote in a Feb. 8 exchange. “For 12 years so that s–t just run off on me.”
* “Too bad he didn’t have rabies or AIDS and too bad he didn’t bite King Heeb’s face off,” he tweeted on Groundhog Day, Feb. 2, recalling when the groundhog Staten Island Chuck nipped Bloomberg at an event at the Staten Island Zoo.
* A gold Nazi-era pin with a German U-boat and a swastika is “my most prized artifact,” he boasted on Jan. 30.
* He repeatedly Photoshopped an image of an unnamed black teen — putting a Hitler mustache on one photo and a surgical mask on another with the caption, “I’s be a doxter.”
It comes less than a week after The Post exposed the vile racist and anti-Semitic tweets posted by Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano’s own EMT son. Joseph Cassano, 23, who quit the next day.
I imagine the statute of limitations is long expired on this one. Above is one of three 1990s videos posted to YouTube yesterday by Edmund J. Haemmerle III (the43k) riding along with FDNY’s Ladder 123 in Brooklyn. The best part is at :24 into the video as Ladder 123 leaves quarters and tries to navigate through traffic. According to the description, the officer used the PA for a very direct message to one driver.
Below are the other two videos. Make sure you check out the firehouse tour. Enjoy this look back to almost 20-years-ago.
Neighbor Sidney Mott posted this to YouTube Wednesday with no details.
Always good for an answer to life’s unknowns, BackstepFirefighter.com‘s Bill Carey tells me this fire was in fact on Wednesday and occured at 1441 Pacific Street, near Nostrand and Atlantic on Box 948.
The video above is from NYRRT84 taken during a three-alarm fire at 542 E. 3rd Street in Brooklyn on Saturday. Thanks to FDNY Incidents on Facebook for alerting us to this fire.
Four attached houses were involved; three of them were heavily damaged. Although the Red Cross did assist sixteen residents, no injuries were reported. Seven families have been displaced.
Below is a brief clip from WHYULOOKING4 showing what this fire looked like on arrival.
This is one I missed from from November 28 that FirefighterSpot.com recently posted. The video from Me Bradus shows FDNY’s initial attack at an apartment fire in the 200 block of 7th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Video from NYRRT84 of a two-alarm fire yesterday evening at 124 57th Street in Brooklyn. The fire was in the basement of a warehouse. There were at least two maydays reported and, according to the New York Post, five firefighters hurt. You will hear on the video attempts to confirm one of the maydays and the order to pull firefighters from the basement for a head count and to regroup.
FDNY spokesman Jim Long made the position of the department very clear to the New York Post asking questions about Firefighter Anthony Harper’s claims he is being ostracized because he’s a vegetarian. Long calls it “nonsense”, telling reporter Philip Messing, “Firehouses across the city have individuals who are vegetarians or who have special diets — i.e., food allergies, etc. — and they are accommodated all the time.”
But Firefighter Harper believes his problems began two-years-ago at Ladder 146 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn when he decided constant firehouse meals with chicken or meat dishes were not good for his health. Harper says opting out of those meals didn’t sit well with fellow firefighters who he says also harassed him about his food choices. Harper believes this all resulted in him being transferred to a desk job at headquarters, is impacting his chances for promotion and caused him to be the only FDNY firefighter written up because he couldn’t get to work from his Staten Island home after Hurricane Sandy.
But he said the harassment grew to the point where he became a pariah who was regularly given dangerous assignments on the roofs of burning buildings and threatened with physical violence.
One fellow firefighter, he said, head-butted him during a petty dispute about looking at a roster.
“I was fat,’’ he said. “I realized that I needed to make some changes.”
So I gave up cigars and meat, and I lost 35 pounds. And now my blood work is like it was when I was in the Army, when I was 21 years old.”
The December fire at a Crown Heights, Brooklyn brownstone that critically burned Firefighter Robert Weidmann is one of the reasons FDNY is studying ventilation techniques in residential buildings.
Will FDNY begin attacking residential basement fires from the exterior through windows rather than interior stairs? Is opening the roof in the initial stages of a fire in a row house a priority? Which is more important to do first, search and rescue or putting water on the fire?
The FDNY is hoping to find the answers to these questions and more as they start burning 20 rowhomes filled with furnishings tomorrow (Monday). An article by Joseph Goldstein in the New York Times, says the materials we now furnish our homes with has FDNY seriously questioning some of its longstanding tactics on residential fires. Goldstein writes the concern is that the use of plastics in things like sofas and mattresses has changed the way a room and its contents burn and that firefighters may need to change the way they approach such fires:
With more plastic in homes, residential fires are now likely to use up all the oxygen in a room before they consume all flammable materials. The resulting smoky, oxygen-deprived fires appear to be going out. But they are actually waiting for an inrush of fresh air, which can come as firefighters cut through roofs and break windows.
Mr. Cassano, the fire commissioner, acknowledged that “ventilation may be hurting people in the fire if we don’t ventilate properly.”
Goldstein interviewed Stephen Kerber from Underwriters Laboratories. UL is taking part in the experiments along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Kerber told Goldstein that firefighters always assumed venting meant cooling but they are finding ”that venting doesn’t cool and allows for things to get much hotter”.
And there’s more:
The experiments will test whether another approach, sticking a nozzle through a basement window, is more effective. The Fire Department has long been inclined to fight fires from inside residences, rather than through open windows, based on a belief that the outside method will drive the fire toward other areas of the house, where occupants might be.
The article cites two well known tragic fires related to modern furnishings and ventilation. One is the Sofa Super Store fire in Charleston that took the lives of nine firefighters five-years-ago. The other is the fire last year that critically burned Firefighter Robert Wiedmann at a Crown Heights brownstone.
One chief involved in the experiments told Goldstein he doesn’t expect the findings will lead to an abandonment of aggressive interior firefighting but will alter the way ventilation is done.
This is from the afternoon of Sunday, April 29 in the Brooklyn neighborhood known as DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Video taken by neighbor Chris Frank. Thanks to Vito Maggiolo for alerting us to the video.
Residents reported that they felt their buildings shake.
Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert denied there was an explosion, however. He said a fire broke out in a piece of reactor equipment in the station, located on 89 John Street.
An FDNY spokesman tells us the fire was brought under control at 6:39 p.m., mostly using foam. A Con Ed spokesman confirms there were no injuries, and no customers were affected with outages as a result of the fire, which broke out around 5:15 p.m. Witnesses reported hearing an explosion, which the spokesman attributed to the sound of oil igniting. The cause remains under investigation.
Forty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Richard Nappi of Engine 237, a 17-year veteran of the FDNY, died during a fire reported around 1:00 this afternoon at a warehouse on Flushing Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Lt. Nappi was a Bronx native who lived in Suffolk County. He has a wife Mary Anne, a 12-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son. According to a statement from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Lt. Nappi overheated, suffered exhaustion and collapsed.
A veteran city fire lieutenant died of an apparent heart attack on Monday afternoon while battling a three-alarm warehouse blaze in Brooklyn, the authorities said.
Fire Lt. Richard Nappi, 47, was commanding a hose line at the fire, at 930 Flushing Avenue in Bushwick, when he began feeling dizzy, Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said. He soon went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at Woodhull Medical center at 3:32 p.m., the authorities said.
“This is a very tragic day for New York City,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference at Woodhull. “Someone who devoted his life to keeping us safe is no longer with us.”
After becoming overheated, Lt. Richard Nappi, 47, of Farmingville, L.I., was taken in cardiac arrest to Woodhull Medical Center, where he died, officials said.
“Outside of his family, his life’s work was keeping New Yorker safe from fires, and by any measure he succeeded magnificently,” said Mayor Bloomberg, speaking at a press conference at the hospital.
They mayor comforted Nappi’s wife, Mary Anne, at the hospital. Nappi, a 9/11 first-responder, also leaves behind a 12-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son.
I am sure many of you recall the video we showed you last September of the attempted rescue of a motorcyclist trapped under a car in Brooklyn when the hydraulic spreaders in the hands of a member of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit didn’t do the trick and the car came crashing down? This occurred while firefighters were attempting to use an air bag to lift the car (click here). Now Bill Carey at BackstepFirefighter.com has come up with a new example of FDNY and ESU sometimes working at cross purposes.
It happened yesterday during a partial scaffolding collapse on East 66th Street in Manhattan. ESU had a police officer rappel off the roof to reach the trapped workers. FDNY handled it in a different way. They opened a window and let the men and the police officer inside the building.
According to WNBC-TV, one of the workers thanked ESU Detective James Coll (interviewed in the stories below) for coming to their aid sending him an email that read, ”You did the most courageous work and I really can’t thank you enough for risking your lives to save us. Thank you again and God bless you.”
Chief Massucci, 48, a 22-year veteran, said firefighters wound up aiding the officer, too. They pulled him in through the same 17th-floor window because he could not climb back up the building’s facade and most likely did not have enough rope to reach the ground, the chief said.
My friend Bill Carey at BackstepFirefighter.com found this interesting video and between the two of us we are going to give the video a lot more views than it deserves. The person taking the video thinks he has a 60 Minutes style expose. To me and many of you, we might as well be watching paint dry.
Shocking news, as noted in the description oberstd9 put with the video-
Five fire fighters of Brooklyn, NY ladder co. 255 take a joy ride in a fire truck to grocery shop at a Brooklyn Shop Rite.
While the man behind the lens knows an injustice when sees one, he doesn't know the difference between an engine company and a ladder company.
As Bill notes, read the comments with the video and you will see just out how outraged this man is.
The good news is that there aren't a lot of people joining him in his displeasure with FDNY on this one. There were only 15 views in 17 days when Bill found it.
Still, the video is a good lesson for everyone. I brought this up three weeks ago when I spoke at the graduation of Arlington County Fire Department Recruit Class 68. While talking about social media ethics, I pointed out that it isn't just what firefighters do while on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter that can cause problems. They will also be under the watchful eye of citizens with cameras on every response and everywhere they go who will be uploading what they find. This is something previous generations of firefighters just didn't have to deal with.
Yes, there were always people in the community complaining that firefighters used the fire truck to go to the grocery store. But now these folks have the visual proof and can't wait to share it with the rest of the world. It is important to be prepared for this by making sure firefighters don't confront the fire paparazzi and, in turn, make things much worse.
Also, my suggestion is fire chiefs should be proactive and confront this head on before the video vigilantes arrive. If you allow your firefighters, EMTs and paramedics to shop with the rigs, provide an explanation on your website and in community meetings. Let the people you serve know up front what your policy is and why it is that way. It will take the wind out of the sails for a lot of these people.
Personally, when I am at the grocery store I am always happy to run into the firefighters who protect me. But I am also not mad at the world thinking public servants only want to screw me and waste my tax money each and every day.
A fire on New Year's Day at 2223 Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn left nine people injured. Make sure you hear the comment from the woman at 2:58 in the video and the response. Read more.
A STATter911.com reader alerted us to this much better video of the attempt to remove a motorcyclist from under a car in Brooklyn on Thursday morning. This is the one where a member of the NYPD's Emergency Services Unit (ESU) tries to lift the car off of 21-year-old Karam Rampersaud using hydraulic spreaders under the rear of the Ford Taurus but the car comes crashing back down. New York officials have told reporters that Rampersaud died because of the original accident and not the mishap with the spreaders.
Here's what I see in this latest clip. (Feel free to correct me if I miss something or use the wrong terminology, particularly when it comes to ESU.).
This video begins more than three minutes before firefighters and police arrive. Engine 225 and Ladder 107 are on the scene first. Two firefighters from the engine walk over to evaluate the scene. One takes a close-up look at the victim and the other appears to set the emergency brake on the car. The officer from Ladder 107 comes up, takes a quick view and speaks to his crew. They appear to immediately begin setting up for air bag operations.
Forty seconds after the arrival of the firefighters an ESU REP (Radio Emergency Patrol) vehicle arrives followed about 15 seconds later by an ESU truck (similar to a heavy rescue squad). Within 50 seconds of their arrival ESU is deploying the spreaders under the rear of the Taurus as the firefighters appear to be continuing to set airbags.
Only a minute after he pulls up on the scene, the ESU officer already has the back raised (far from the four feet witnesses described), but seconds into the lifting the vehicle comes off the spreaders and slams back down. It looks like a bit of a close call for an ESU member on the drivers side of the vehicle placing cribbing (the same officer also appears to have moved aside FDNY equipment placed on that side of the vehicle).
After a bit of commotion the ladder officer appears to talk with two of the ESU officers and airbag operations continue with involvement of both firefighters and police officers.
At 9:45 into the video, about 6:40 after FDNY's arrival, the rescuers begin pulling the victim from under the car.
The incident has many in our comments section talking about the working relationship between FDNY and the police department's ESU. There have been some very public battles through the years.
Below is a NYPD video called Inside the NYPD: Emergency Services Unit.
I have been looking unsuccessfully on the web for a detailed listing of primary responsibilities for ESU and the official working relationship between ESU and FDNY at scenes similar to his one.
UPDATE: A STATter911.com reader has sent along a document (2009 version) outlining the Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS) for New York. It is attached. It lists the "primary agency" for auto extrication as "NYPD/FDNY (First to arrive)".
FDNY is listed alone as the "primary agency" for confined space rescue, elevator incident or emergency, entrapment/impalement, fire and structural collapse.
An ESU REP at a recent fire in Brooklyn. Click above for the video.
Both the FDNY and the NYPD were on the scene of an accident in Brooklyn yesterday that is making headlines in New York. It happened around 8:45 AM
on Loring Avenue and Forbell Street in East New York when 21 year old, Karam Rampersaud, on a motorcyle, was run over by a Ford Taurus and became trapped underneath the vehicle.
From the video it appears an NYPD Emergency Services Unit crew member is handling the lifting of the vehicle when the car suddenly comes back down.
Police and fire officials have been giving indications to reporters that Rampersaud died from the injuries during the original crash.
Click the image above to watch early video from from gifterphotos on YouTube of a fire yesterday at 3904 Fort Hamilton Parkway in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn. The photographer pulls up in the early stages of the fire inside a commercial garage. Watch closely at the bottom left of the screen at 2:50 in the video when a firefighter trying to get onto the roof loses his footing and takes a tumble. One firefighter was transported with a broken ankle. News reports indicate a dozen firefighters were hurt.
Must see video: One of our sharp readers must have been reading my mind. Even before I posted this column they sent me the video above. It is from Daybreak, Utah where a home fireworks show set the shooter's home on fire and injured a man and boy watching the display. Listen to the conversations of the neighbors. Read more about the incident. While some of the fireworks the Utah man was using have been described as illegal, the state has a new law that allows citizens the freedom to use aerial rockets that shoot up to 150 feet in the air (and, of course, the state refused to adopt residential sprinklers). Click here & here for other videos from this celebration of freedom in Daybreak.
At the same time another story from Maine caught my attention. Governor Paul LePage signed a bill into law Friday that eases a lot of the state's restrictions on consumer fireworks. It wasn't in time for this year's July 4th celebrations, but it will be for the next one. (My home state of Virginia almost did the same thing last year.)
I have a much different view about all of this. They are just more examples of big money from home builders and the fireworks lobbies winning the day over common sense about safety. Somehow I must have slept through the part of history class where one of the truths our founding fathers saw as self-evident is that the voice of the person with the deepest pockets is the one that counts.
Sorry, but I don't see being able to set my neighbor's house on fire with a flying missile and maim a few children along the way as an important freedom. Or is it freedom to stifle the voice of that state's expert in the field. And I don't see freedom as allowing the construction of houses with no fire barrier or effective suppression system, built so close together that a fire in my neighbor's house will more than likely take out mine and maybe a few others.
Prince William County (VA) Fire Chief Kevin McGee pointed out to me earlier this century that our founding fathers learned the hard way about the benefits of home separation, fire prevention and materials that can resist fire. Now, 235 years later we forget those important history lessons at the very same time we have been gutting firefighting forces across this great land.
And there is no doubt, despite what some will see as my negativity on this issue (and a few other issues about freedom), it IS a great land that we are celebrating today. Please remember all of those who are and have fought for our freedoms. They deserve our support, respect and admiration.
May I humbly suggest that we just keep in mind what those freedoms are really about and that they are not suddenly unimportant because of the passion of the moment or because the highest bidder wants to move us in a different direction.
On previous July 4ths I have told you about my 1993 trip to New York to see FDNY in action. Two videos from that trip with fire buff extraordinaire Vito Maggiolo are on this page.
One of the videos (above) is of a most unusual experience, the crash of a blimp. Here's what I wrote about that in 2007 (don't you love it when an ego driven blogger quotes himself?):
Independence Day in 1993 was one of the stranger days of my life. I had gone with my friend Vito Maggiolo to New York to experience July 4th, usually the busiest day of the year for FDNY.
In the afternoon we were visiting one of Vito’s friends at Manhattan Fire Alarm in Central Park.
As we were sitting around chatting, the phones suddenly began ringing. We were hearing bits and pieces of only one side of the conversation. But the call takers were asking questions with surprised looks on their faces. We heard: “A what?”; “Where”?; “It’s deflating?”; “Over the Hudson?”.
Vito and I raced south and then to the west toward the Hudson River. We arrived just after the first firefighters and saw Pizza Hut’s Bigfoot Pizza Blimp draped over the side of an apartment building. We watched as the two injured crew members were brought down from the roof.
The other video (above) is more relevant to today's column. It gives you a glimpse of Brooklyn at a time when citizens with massive amounts of fireworks helped make Independence Day the busiest day of the year for FDNY.
Here is what I wrote four years ago about my 1993 experience:
It seemed as if fireworks were going off on every street. Barrels of fireworks burned in the middle of many blocks. Bottle rockets struck our car. M-80s exploded in trash can after trash can. The radio blared with reports of neighbor’s homes set on fire by fireworks along with numerous reports of injured people.
On one hand it felt as if I had been transported to a war zone. I’ll admit, being new to this, it was a little scary. At the same time, it reminded me of something very beautiful — one of my favorite movies, Barry Levinson’s “Avalon”.
The scene of Russian immigrant Sam Krichinsky arriving in Baltimore on July 4th is repeated throughout the film. As he walks under exploding fireworks all around him, this is the voice-over dialogue:
I came to America in 1914–by way of Philadelphia. That’s where I got off the boat. And then I came to Baltimore. It was the most beautiful place you ever seen in your life. There were lights everywhere! What lights they had! It was a celebration of lights! I thought they were for me, Sam, who was in America. Sam was in America! I know what holiday it was, but there were lights. And I walked under them. The sky exploded, people cheered, there were fireworks! What welcome it was, what a welcome!
A man is reported to be in serious condition after being rescued from his Coney Island home yesterday morning by the crew from FDNY's Ladder 161. It is one of 20 fire companies on the chopping block. Union officials say the ladder crew arrived on the scene within six-minutes of the fire at 3194 Bayview Avenue. Eight of the fire companies on the closing list are in Brooklyn. None of the articles had an official response from the city.
The 23-year-old man was trapped in a back room of the Bayview Ave. building in Coney Island when firefighters from Ladder 161 arrived about 6:30 a.m., officials said.
Lt. Edward Gonzalez and Firefighter Sean Connolly crawled through the flames to get to the 6-foot-2, 260-pound man.
"We climbed on our hands and knees past the fire," Gonzalez said.
"We got the window out and we were able to get the victim out safely,” said firefighter Sean Connolly.
“He was very lucky, this person was very lucky, I don't know what's going to happen in the future, I just know today this person made it," said Lt. Edward Gonzalez of Ladder 161.
"This person would clearly not be alive if Mayor Bloomberg had his way," said President Steve Cassidy of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, "What happened early this morning should show the administration that these companies are vital in every neighborhood and should not be closed."
Cassidy also said that the backup company, Ladder 169 arrived 6 and a half minutes after 161 and that if the were the primary responders, today's blaze could of had a far more bad outcome
A fire Thursday at 275 Eldert Street in Brooklyn. Before the arrival of FDNY neighbors try to help those at second floor windows in the front. It appears from the video there may have been others waiting for help in the rear. None of the injuries were reported to be serious. Below is a later video from the fireground.
This was the fire early Sunday morning at 510 61st Street in Brooklyn. Forty people were injured including at least eight firefighters. Four people were initially in critical condition. A man has been arrested accused of starting the fire. On the video above it sounds like there were two separate, quickly cleared maydays on the fireground. Firegeezer had initial coverage of the fire. Firefighter Spot has a FDNY press release about the arrest.
The fire department said 56-year-old Chiu Tsang was arrested on charges of arson after they reviewed video surveillance tapes of the fire. Tsang was identified at the scene and made a number of incriminating admissions, according to the FDNY.
The blaze at the four-story building at 61st Street broke out around 5 a.m. Sunday. It took more than 140 firefighters over two hours to bring the flames under control.
This video was posted on YouTube by forevrblsd1 of the three-alarm fire in Crown Heights, Brooklyn a week ago. There are still pictures from the fire by Adam Alberto at NJFirePictures.com. The website has this description of the fire:
At around 10:30 A.M. on March 1st Brooklyn Box 1016 was transmitted for a fire in the basement of a laundromat at 325 Troy Ave between Union and President Sts. Upon arrival the 10-75 was transmitted and the fire quickly went to all hands. Firefighters were forced to withdraw from the building due to a partial collapse. A second alarm followed shortly by a 3rd Alarm was transmitted. Heavy fire conditions raced through the 1 story taxpayer.
It took about 150 firefighters nearly three hours to battle the flames at Laundry World on Troy Avenue. They say it began in the basement at around 10:30 a.m. and gutted the Laundromat, but did not spread to neighboring homes.
FDNY early video & audio: Brooklyn 2nd alarm apartment fire. Citizen: ‘You’ve been here 10 minutes. Where’s the water?’
21 commentsA fire on New Year's Day at 2223 Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn left nine people injured. Make sure you hear the comment from the woman at 2:58 in the video and the response. Read more.