Think for a moment: Is your fire escape window locked? Because lately some burglars in Greenpoint, Brooklyn have been able to steal lots of gadgets, thanks to unlocked fire escape windows. Apparently a number of apartments in a Manhattan Avenue building were hit on December 3, with laptops, memory cards, and a camera taken; Community Board 1 Public Safety Committee member Tom Burrows said, "Nothing was broken, nothing was smashed. They didn’t damage anything. It was like there’s something sitting, they found a window open, threw it open and went in." more ›

An elderly Bronx woman with Alzheimer's who had been missing for over 36 hours was finally found Sunday morning—dead on the fire escape two stories below her apartment. Lucia Rodriguez, 79, disappeared Friday night, and her son Miguel spent Saturday searching local hospitals and shelters, hoping to find her alive. Investigators are trying to figure out how Rodriguez got onto the fire escape and what the cause of death was; her corpse was spotted by a neighbor at 8 a.m. Sunday. "I don't know what I'm going to do now without her," 73-year-old Marcelino Ayala, her longtime live-in companion, tells the Daily News. more ›

Ah, mid-century livin'. If it was anything like Mad Men, then people were spiking their morning coffees with whiskey, chain smoking, cooking everything with pounds of butter, and generally not looking out for their own health, safety or well-being. So it makes perfect sense that during that time it was perfectly acceptable for children to run rampant on city fire escapes. more ›

Thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of people gathered for today's Gay Pride March, and it seems that the NYPD is serious about revelers on Christopher Street not watching the parade from fire escapes. While the Sixth Precinct's letter to Christopher Street residents simply "recommended" that fire escapes not be used for march viewing due to concerns about the escapes' structural integrity and for the public, we hear that cops are taking their suggestion seriously—a tipster says, "They just made a party of folks leave their fire escape (I think at 100 Christopher)." more ›

This Sunday is the annual LGBT Gay Pride March, which starts on Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street and then makes its way down Fifth, swings right onto West 8th Street and ends on Christopher Street. Reader Sacha Lecca let us know that on Wednesday night, signs were posted on all the apartment buildings on Christopher Street. The NYPD "recommended that viewing of this weekend's Heritage of Pride Parade not be done from fire escapes," due to safety—given concern over the structural integrity of the fire escapes and the possible harm to not only people on them but people below. more ›

Today Brooklyn Based has some tips on growing the perfect garden...on your fire escape. The site eases cases of outdoor space envy by saying, "If you’ve got window sills, a fire escape or a stoop, you’re two months away from homegrown tomatoes and morning glory vines." One commenter quickly sounded his safety whistle with warnings of such an urban escape being illegal—but it's certainly been done before. In fact, earlier this month SustainBlog had a list of vegetables one could grow on their fire escape. more ›

A naked man standing on a fire escape and, later, a storefont, fell to his death after a police officer stunned him with a Taser. Based on video (below) and witness reports, Iman Morales, 35, was wielding a fluorescent light bulbs at cops who tried to get close. more ›

A 2-year-old boy who had crawled out of his Queens apartment through an open window and onto a fire escape fell six stories to his death yesterday morning. His mother had been taking a shower. Neighbors tried to comfort Ezquel Contreras, who was bleeding extensively and was later pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital. The neighbors also said that the child's mother, Sandra Perez, didn't seem to realize her son was gone, since she didn't come... more ›