Results tagged “hazmat”

After three foreign offices received envelopes containing a suspicious substance on Monday night, three more received similar envelopes yesterday. First, the German Mission to the U.N. reported receiving an envelope, and later in the day, the British and Russian Missions also received envelopes. The NYPD expects more letters to be found in the coming days and Mayor Bloomberg said of the incidents, "Anybody that thinks that it's a joke is making a very bad mistake. If we apprehend you you're going to face criminal charges."

Hazmat teams descended on two United Nations missions and a consulate in midtown Manhattan last evening, after they received envelopes containing an unknown white powder. Decontamination tents were set up outside the French Mission at 245 East 47th, the Austrian Mission at 600 Third Avenue, and Uzbekistan Consulate at 801 Second AVenue.

Yikes: Up at 119th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a fuel truck apparently hit some scaffolding—and the scaffolding collapsed. We're hearing that the only person injured was the truck driver and that there's a hazmat crew on scene to remove the fuel.

The conditions inside Ming Li Sung's Long Island City apartment were so squalid that police thought the stench was surely emanating from a decomposing corpse. But when an FDNY haz-mat team kicked in the door, they were shocked to find the apartment occupied by Sung, 69, who yelled at them to get out. Instead, police took him to Elmhurst Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. His neighbors at the Ravenswood Houses say they've begged the Housing Authority for years to take action on Sing, whose apartment was so wretched that dead flies would pile up on the hallway floor. One resident, Robin McNeil, tells the Daily News, "All Housing would do was come and sweep them up," and her husband thinks the sickening stench contributed to her miscarriage in May! Yesterday, police said the apartment resembled a landfill, with rotting garbage piled floor to ceiling. When they entered the place, an "army of cockroaches" poured out into the second-floor hallway, and McNeil's husband tells the News, "The police were throwing up." Unfortunately for Sung, the mess was discovered too late to be entered in this summer's Filthiest Apartment Contest; unfortunately for the rest of us, it's lunchtime.

Move over Hipster Grifter, the Observer has their eye on Houseguest from Hell! At the center of the sad tale is New Yorker Matt Tratner, who visited London earlier this month and left his Fresh Meadows, Queens apartment (and his dog) in the care of a friend named John. A longtime pal of Tratner's, John's yoga wear line (sold at Barney's) recently went under and he was attempting to pick up the pieces of his life. Once alone, however, everything fell apart, he displayed odd behavior to those who encountered him, and soon enough the SWAT team was called into the building. They found him "standing in front of Matt’s kitchen window...butt naked and full of blood." Tratner promptly returned, to find his home in disarray—the living room sofa was in the bathtub, the apartment was flooded, everything shattered, and blood smeared just about everywhere. A hazmat team cleaned up most of the blood, but Tratner is left with upwards of $15,000 worth of damages. Yikes. With his friend now in a city-run psychiatric hospital, Tratner says he will not be pressing charges.

A Long Island woman was removed from her home wearing a HAZMAT suit Thursday, after it was determined that not only was her home infested with bird mites, but the woman herself had them crawling out of her orifices. The mites originated from a birds nest that was found in the bathroom vent at Nina Bradica's Levittown home. They soon appeared in force all over the bathroom and Bradica came into contact with them while drying herself with a towel after bathing.

One Park Slope resident emailed us to describe a surprising scene unfolding this morning on 4th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.

I went out for my coffee around 10am and there were 4 white undercover SUVs, an NYPD emergency truck and a large, black DEP/HAZMAT truck/mobile unit parked on my street! When I came back from my coffee run I saw a Fire Dept. SUV parked at the 6th Ave end of the block and a car from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner… A moment ago I saw a few passersby noticing the high volume of vehicles and they pulled out phones and cameras. Someone in the Medical examiner's car honked the horn and shouted out "no pictures." I asked the people from the ME's car what was going on, but they said they couldn't say anything and that I should call the 78th Precinct for more info…There's also an ambulance now.