Results tagged “firedepartment”

A federal judge ruled that the FDNY's written exams "unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color." Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote, "These unlawful practices barred over a thousand additional black and Hispanic applicants from consideration for appointment as FDNY firefighters, and unfairly delayed the appointment of hundreds of black and Hispanic firefighters." Back in 2007, the Justice Department joined the Vulcan Society to sue the fire department because many more black and Hispanic candidates failed the exam; at the time, only 7.5% of the FDNY was black and/or Hispanic (while in LA and Philadelphia, fire departments were around 40% black and/or Hispanic). The AP reports, "Garaufis said he must consider remedies to end the discrimination which occurred in written exams given to thousands of firefighter candidates from 1999 to 2007." The city has not decided whether it will appeal the decision.

      

Yesterday afternoon, a brush fire swept across the Oakwood Beach section of Staten Island and became a 6-alarm blaze that spread to houses. The Staten Island Advance reports, "Giant billows of smoke...could be seen from as far away as Manhattan and New Jersey. About 250 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze." The fire lasted for four hours.

After criticism over the 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. closings of four firehouses across the city, the Staten Island Advance announces the Fire Department has come up with "an ad hoc addendum: The companies will be staffed with surplus firefighters, when available."

A Bronx firefighter has been arrested for making calls about non-existent fires, apparently in protest of FDNY budget cuts that will eliminate a night tour at his City Island firehouse. Nicholas Vrettos allegedly made a dozen calls about fires, including one in a school cafeteria, on December 4 (when the cuts were announced). Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said, "You're taking a unit away from what might be a real emergency where somebody is having a heart attack or there's a fire or any other life-threatening emergency and that's the danger and that's why this is a felony," but a City Island resident, who did not condone calling in false alarms, told NY1, "If it in any way illustrated our plight, it at least had that effect." Vrettos could face up to seven in prison.

As if you needed any further reason to steer clear of McFadden's after last weekend's massive brawl, the Daily News recalls that this isn't the first time blood's been spilled at the Turtle Bay bar and restaurant. Back in 2004, one Todd Barnes took his date there for a drink and walked out with part of his ear missing, courtesy of one of New York's bravest.

It took officers from four precincts and the elite Emergency Services Unit over a quarter of an hour to break up a massive bar brawl at McFadden's on 42nd Street and Second Avenue around 10:30 on Saturday night. Police say a crowd of about 20 people were involved in the melee when it erupted out onto the street. Five people were finally arrested, including two firefighters, and another two firefighters were given summons for disorderly conduct after they went to the stationhouse and harassed cops about the arrests.

A 72-year-old wheelchair-bound Bronx woman is suing the fire department for laughing and injuring her after she called them for help last March, the Post reports. The ex-husband of two-hundred pound Ziola Garcia called 911 after her "self-powered" wheelchair, which elevates 3½ feet to allow her to reach objects, got stuck in the "up" position. But it was all a big joke to the firemen who responded, she alleges: "They were laughing at me, making fun of me because I was trapped in the chair. I was insulted. I asked them, 'What's the show?'" Her shoulder was also injured during the rescue attempt.

After two fires with fatalities and one with a firefighter injury, the Uniformed Firefighters Association and City Councilman Leroy Comrie expressed outrage over the FDNY's response to Queens fires. They say the new pilot dispatch program is endangering lives.

James Maietta probably wishes that he lived in an elevator building; especially after firefighters accidentally dropped him down a flight of stairs in November 2006. The 15-foot fall left Maietta crippled and confined to a Yonkers nursing home for a year. Now the man is suing the FDNY.

How do you get rid of an unwanted fire truck? Simple, put it on Craigslist!

This evening, there was a two-alarm fire at the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. Hunts Point Cooperative Market, the "Largest Food Distribution Center in the World," is where many meat and meat products are processed and distributed in the tri-state area.

Yesterday, separate fires in Harlem and in the Bronx each claimed a life.

A week after the illegally converted-for-residential use warehouse 475 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg was evacuated by city agencies, due to building violations including an illegal matzoh bakery (and combustible grains being stored in the basement), the building will be padlocked this afternoon at 4PM. There will be a "solemn observance of the shutting of a great arts community," according to a press release we received. More details:

Come and show your support for the 200+ displaced tenants of 475 and the live/work community as a whole.

Continue reading "475 Kent Avenue to be Padlocked at 4PM"

Over 150 residents of an eleven-story building at Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg were evacuated yesterday after the Fire Department and Buildings Department found a number of violations. The building had been illegally converted to residences and a matzoh factory, complete with two silos of (highly combustible) grain in the basement. A neighboring building was cited as well, and the violations ranged from non-working standpipes (which firefighters use to deliver water to fires), illegal partitions, blocked exits, inoperable sprinkler systems and others, including the illegal grain silos for the unauthorized basement bakery.

Another pot farm bites the dust: A small fire in Queens led the Fire Department to over 200 marijuana plants growing inside a home.

An explosion in a Long Island man's basement damaged sheet rock and spread broken glass while shredding a soft cooler Saturday evening, causing Long Island emergency personnel to respond in force. The bomb scare was the result of a show-and-tell gone awry. Francisco Lopes is a researcher at Stony Brook University, who said that he brought home some pieces of dry ice in a sealed glass jar to show his daughter. He left the container in his lunch cooler and left for dinner with family members. Unfortunately, Lopes did not realize what apparently many teenagers are fully aware of: allowing dry ice to warm in a sealed container results in a buildup of gas pressure that ends with a loud bang.

A memo from FDNY Operations Chief Patrick McNally is instructing firefighters to conduct inspections of buildings under construction or demolition on two different timetables, depending on their height. City rules have long mandated that all buildings going up or coming down had to be inspected by the fire department every 15 days. McNally's memo now instructs firefighters to inspect buildings over 75 feet tall every 15 days, and below 75 feet tall every 30 days.

The Fire Department revealed statistics showing that response times have decreased for the third year in a row. The 2007 average response time, based on 490,767 calls, was 4 minutes and 49 seconds (for FDNY & EMS services). In 2006, the average response time was 4 minutes, 54 seconds and in 2005 it was 5 minutes, 9 seconds. Response time is a general term for any sort of vehicle to come on the scene, not necessarily a fire truck, and could be for a water main break.

A FDNY lieutenant died as he and other firefighters were battling a fire in Crown Heights. Lieutenant John H. Martinson went into cardiac arrest during the 2-alarm fire on the 14th floor of the Ebbets Field Apartments.

Yesterday afternoon, the FDNY responded to a fire that broke out in a Midwood apartment building, only to find two girls, ages 1 and 2, alone. The girls' mother had left them with her boyfriend, who went out. Sigh.

We interviewed hundreds of people this year, from long-time rockers to the designer of New York’s subway map. Here are a few conversations you may have missed:

• On the day Radiohead’s In Rainbows was released exclusively online, musician Jonny Greenwood talked about the “experiment.”
  Continue reading "Gothamist Year In Interviews"

On Friday, dozens of birds fell out of the sky and died on a street in the Great Kills section of Staten Island. Residents grew concerned as, the Staten Island Advance reported, birds "flopped and twitched...as they breathed their last" (video here). One resident said the birds were flying "as if they were drunk" before falling to the ground.

The 9 year-old boy who perished in a house fire on Staten Island late Sunday apparently died while trying to save his pets. Tommy Monahan apparently had been with his mother as they tried to escape the fire, but he raced back to his room for his dog, lizard and fish. A 12-year-old neighbor told the Daily News, "Everybody thought he was outside but he wasn't.

Aside from a reanimated corpse Beatles reunion, there is not another dormant band in the world that could cause more excitement getting back together than Led Zeppelin. So, for the first time in 19 years, with Jason Bonham in for his late father behind the drums and the rest of the original pieces in place, the band picked up where they left off, playing a Greatest-Hits set to a beyond sold out O2 arena in London earlier this week. The band sounded remarkably on point for a group of guys who hadn't appeared on stage in two decades, seeming to having a total blast playing with each other. To the surprise of nearly everyone, they even dusted off Stairway to Heaven and gave it a go, putting every miserable bar band for the last 30 years to shame. Will they do it again? Maybe come stateside, play a couple nights at the Garden? Time will tell. In the meantime, check out the many clips on youtube (before they all get taken down.) (pic via positivelypurple's Flickr)

A "rising star" in the Fire Department was found with three gunshot to the head in his Staten Island home Sunday morning. The ME's office said that Douglas J. Mercereau's death was a homicide. It's believed that his 38-year-old wife, Janet Redmond-Mercereau, is a suspect (the Daily News calls her the "prime suspect"). She called 911 around 8:25AM on Sunday, saying she found her husband's body. The Staten Island Advance says the couple had "started...

At least a few buildings on or near Mercer Street lost power when a fire or an explosion occurred in a manhole at Mercer and West 3rd Street exploded this morning. The block was closed off by the Fire Department. We hear there were no injuries, but it's unclear what caused the fire. One witness saw a billowing black smoke and said it smelled "acrid, like maybe it's an electrical fire." And contributor Gideon...

After being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year over unfair hiring practices, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the number of black and Hispanic candidates has doubled in the past five years. Of the 4,000 applicants who scored highest on this year's entrance exam (22,000 took the exam, 21,000 passed), a third were black or Hispanic, up from 14% in 2002. The FDNY currently has just under 12,000 members; 666 are Hispanic, 337...

Yesterday morning's rain caused a recently installed sewer main to burst, flooding the basement and parking garage of a Battery Park City luxury apartment building. Water levels reached up to 20 feet. Not only were car owners greeted with news that their vehicles were either submerged or floating on top of sewer water, hundreds of tenants at 90 West Street were evacuated. Fire officials explained that, per WNBC, "rain flooded a re-routed sewer pipe,...

The gas main explosion that rocked a home on 48th Ave. and 41st. St. Wedneday––killing one woman and injuring six others––occurred despite what ConEd and FDNY say was them following proper procedures preceding the incident. Kunta Oza, who died at the age of 69, was burned over 90% of her body. In addition to the six others injured in the explosion, 200 people were evacuated from the block until it was deemed safe to return....

The 69-year-old woman who was burned over 90% of her body in a gas explosion in her Sunnyside home died yesterday. City Councilman Eric Gioia said, "It is with great regret and sadness that I announce the passing of Kunta Oza. My deepest condolences go out to her entire family, and I ask that all New Yorkers keep them in their Thanksgiving prayers." On Wednesday afternoon, calls were made to 911 about a gas smell...