Results tagged “fdny”

Metallica just finished up a two night run at Madison Square Garden, and at least one fan is likely still reeling from Sunday night's show. The NY Post reports that 33-year-old New York firefighter, Gerard Weihe, got ejected from the show by security guards (for standing on chairs and "making a racket"). After being tossed, he came back for an encore and kicked in a plate-glass window! So hardcore... and so arrested.

Firefighters responding to a deadly Woodside fire that killed three and injured four in an illegal basement apartment yesterday could have arrived sooner — had they not been routed to the wrong address first. A 911 operator mistakenly entered a two instead of a five and sent Engine Company 292 and Rescue Company 4 on a "wild goose chase" to 62nd Street instead of 65th Street, a delay that cost firefighters about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, according to the fire union.

Yesterday morning, two fire trucks collided in Brooklyn on Ashford Street between New Lots Avenue and Hegeman Street. A truck from Engine 236 and a truck from Ladder 107 were both responding to a gas emergency, but Engine 236's truck hit Ladder 107's at an intersection, causing Ladder 107's rig to overturn. A witness said, "It went up in the air. I could see the wheels. It spun, and then it slammed down on its side, and then it slid and stopped, wrapped in the tree. To think you could turn that thing over."

Fire trucks from Engine 236 and Ladder 107 collided this morning on Ashford Street between New Lots and Hegeman Avenues. A number of firefighters were taken to area hospitals and we hear that "heavy wreckers and fleet services" are requested to the scene. The Daily News reports, "It was not immediately clear if either rig was on a call at the time of the accident."

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta further explained his decision to resign at the end of the year. He told the Daily News, "47 years in city government is enough," while saying to the NY Times, "The reason I am leaving now is I have decided, after 47 years, that if I am ever going to get to those other things, like teaching and writing, and some traveling. I better get to it now."

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta is stepping down at the end of the year. The AP reports, "Scoppetta took over just months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack that devastated the FDNY, killing 343. He said in a letter to staff Thursday that he took the post because he wanted to help the city recover from the tragedy. He said the biggest challenge of his job was to rebuild the ranks while preparing to respond to another attack."

Yesterday morning, a fire broke out in a City Island building with apartments and retail establishments. While firefighters were able to contain it, NY1 reports that the Uniformed Firefighters Association is worried about the response time, claiming "an inexperienced fire dispatcher gave the crew the wrong address.. But fire officials say the original call went dead before an actual address was given, and that the operator sent crews from Ladder 53 to the location of the call, which turned out to be a cell phone tower."

The nightmare on Jane Street continues, though it still remains uncertain if the real nightmare is the Jane Hotel, or the wealthy NIMBYs who are unleashing every city agency upon their new neighbor.

Hunky firefighter who not only posed shirtless for an FDNY calendar but was also in a Guys Gone Wild video? Check. Reality show participant who stabbed husband in arm? Check. Sexy text messages between firefighter and participant, including "I want to let you know just how f---ing bad I wanna f--- you right now!!!!"? Check check check!

Aww: A six-year-old Brooklyn girl called 911 when her mother had a seizure in the middle of the night. Little Ciara Rogers told WCBS 2, "There was nobody else - she was on the floor, and [little brother] Luis was crying in the crib, and I was crying so much that my head was hurting. I took a deep breath and I called 9-1-1."

A man was arrested for starting a fire in March that tore through six local businesses and caused an estimated $2 million in property damage. 40-year-old William Crean of the Bronx has been charged with 2nd degree arson and reckless endangerment for the March 22nd fire in Westchester Square. He could face up to 25 years if convicted. The three-alarm blaze required 33 FDNY units and 140 firefighters and took three hours to control.

The Ringling Bros. elephants (which Peta just caught on film being beaten by employees) are at the center of another controversy. Reportedly a Brooklyn Fire Dept. (Engine 245) had to close its firehouse for 30 minutes under city orders to bathe Suzie the elephant. The department says they wanted no part in the press event, saying, "What they did compromised that community; fortunately no one was hurt. Whoever at city hall decided to do this doesn't understand public safety and doesn't understand the role that firefighters play in public safety."

Mayor Bloomberg was back in court for the third time in three months, giving a three-hour deposition in the second discrimination case he's had to deal with lately—this one brought by the Justice Department after complaints of unfair hiring practices from the Vulcan Society of black firefighters. The Times reports Bloomberg testified that he "did not recall receiving a report more than six years ago warning him about sharp differences in the passing rates between white and minority candidates for firefighter jobs." The mayor was not expected to testify until he went off about the case, unprompted, during his Congressional testimony in support of Sonia Sotomayor. The case may now head to trial this fall to determine if there was intent in the city's alleged negligence. A lawyer for the Vulcans said, “We’ve presented documents to him showing that the proportion of blacks in the Fire Department...is lower than the proportion that was in the Fire Department in the 1990s. (Bloomberg) dismissed that as minor differences — unimportant — at the same time that he said that he and the city have a great interest in expanding diversity."

Yesterday morning, a fire broke out in an apartment building in the Fordham section of the Bronx, and when the firefighters responded, there was a car—with an "official NYPD placard issued to cops"— blocking the hydrant. The Post reports "frustrated firefighters had to rely on handheld fire extinguishers to put out the kitchen blaze." Four young children were treated for smoke inhalation at a local hospital—and a cat was given oxygen on the scene! While the FDNY said it wasn't clear whether the hydrant-blocking car was a cop's car, "another fire official at the scene told The Post it was an unmarked police vehicle." Still, a Post photographer who tried to snap a picture of the placard itself "was forced to move away by cops." The car was towed and moved to the 52nd Precinct, probably to keep from the angry neighbors egging it—they told the Post, "Why would you leave your car where people need to get water in case of an emergency?" and "If it was an off-duty cop, he should have known better."

An off-duty firefighter got called into action Friday night when he ended up pulling a Wes Autrey and jumping down on the tracks to rescue a man who had fainted and was laying unconscious on the tracks just as an uptown Q train began pulling into the Union Square station. 30-year-old Adam Rivera, originally of Bay Ridge, had been out in the East Village getting Indian food with his girlfriend to celebrate their seventh anniversary. The couple was heading home to the Upper West Side when Rivera spotted 45-year-old Marco Delamo on the tracks. The firefighter out of Engine 10 in lower Manhattan told reporters, "People were panicking, but nobody was doing anything...I thought to myself, 'This is my job — I'm a New York City firefighter, and I have to do something...There was no time to be afraid. You can't waste time hesitating. You just move, and the thinking stops...Being right there in a position to help — that's why I joined the department." Rivera and two other men lifted Delamo to the platform before he was taken to St. Vincent's intensive care with head injuries.

Awww—the FDNY made 5-year-old Tahlique Garay a "junior paramedic" for his informative—and life-saving—call to 911 when his pregnant mother passed out in their Queens home. You can listen to the 911 call here: Tahlique says, "My mommy, um, passed out a little bit," and was able to give his address, explain that she gets seizures, and unlock his door for medics. His mother, Jennifer Garay, has suffered from seizures before and explained that she prepped him just in case, "I didn't want to scare him but I had to tell him what to do if I got sick." By the time EMTs arrived, little Tahlique showed them where his mom was and explained her medical history; Jennifer Garay, who was taken to the hospital for severe dehydration, said, "He not only saved me, he saved his sister as well." And Tahlique said he'd teach his new sister and friends about 911, "Make sure to call 9-1-1 if you have an emergency or you are hurt."

After initially being given a pass from testifying in the federal case against the FDNY's alleged discriminatory practices with its entrance exams, Mayor Bloomberg has been ordered to give a deposition in the case due to his eagerness to expound upon it while giving testimony before Congress during Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. The News says the deposition was ordered "as a result of Bloomberg's blabbing" and the Times suggests next time he testifies, the mayor "might want to stick to the subject." Bloomberg voluntarily spoke at length about the FDNY case while relating it to a similar one in New Haven that Sotomayor had decided on (a ruling he disagreed with). The federal judge in the FDNY discrimination suit said, "The mayor's sworn testimony before Congress indicates his personal involvement in the events at issue in this litigation." Last week a judge ruled the entrance exams "unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color" and the case is now heading toward its penal phase. When asked about the judge's orders, the mayor said, "I have to talk to our lawyers, but normally I give depositions when asked."

One Queens FDNY lieutenant is doing something more than posing for calendars and, you know, saving lives; 38-year-old Terry Brody just wrote a romance novel (get a taste of it here)! The Daily News reports singer Shakira was his muse, as he got the idea for the plot when her video popped up on the firehouse television in 2003. Yesterday he was handing out copies in Times Square, and told the paper, "It's a romantic comedy about an NYC firefighter and a pop star and they meet after he saves her life in a fire," and is titled Rescuing Madison. Before you get your hopes up, ladies, this one is married with a kid—but that doesn't mean you can't make up your own romance novel about an FDNY lieutenant/author sweeping you off your feet! Meanwhile, back at the firehouse, Brody says of his fellow firemen, "They break my chops left and right. It's a book for teenage girls for the most part. They say, 'It really brought out the teenage girl inside of me."

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.

Last Friday, the Throgs Neck Bridge was shut down due to a three-alarm fire that started on construction scaffolding beneath the bridge. Now the FDNY says the fire was started by a construction worker's blow torch: Newsday reports, "Work being performed under the bridge at the time of the blaze is part of a reconstruction project to replace about 140,000 square feet of roadway deck at the Queens approach." The contractor, E.E. Cruz & Co., a NJ company also doing work at Ground Zero, did not comment. The 48-year-old bridge's Queens-bound lanes are open while only two Bronx-bound lanes are open.

The city's Department of Investigation says that the Fire Department and Department of Buildings failed to inspect the former Deutsche Bank building in the months leading up to the August 2007 seven-alarm fire that claimed two firefighters' lives. For instance, a DOB inspector told his supervisor that there was a breach in a water standpipe, but the supervisor allegedly told him to leave it out of his report. The Daily News points out, "If the test had been carried out, inspectors would have discovered a more serious issue with the standpipe - preventing the tragedy that claimed firefighters Joseph Graffagnino Jr. and Robert Beddia." The DOI report also reiterated claims that the FDNY didn't inspect the building as it should have, "Everyone had tunnel vision." Graffagnino's father lamented to the News, "Why didn't they do anything about it? They couldn't do anything right." You can read the whole report here (PDF).

In what may be the least shocking news item of the day, a group of drunk off-duty firefighters got a little rowdy and hit on women yesterday afternoon. But at least one NYC resident refused to accept the status quo and complained to the department after witnessing the debauchery. Rebeca Izquierdo, a former inspector with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, says a party bus "blasting hip-hop and reggaeton" pulled up at Allen and Stanton streets around 2 p.m. and released 30 firefighters, who had come from the department's annual Medal Day ceremony. She tells the Post, "They were all in uniform with open containers and they were soliciting young girls to get on the bus." When she called the FDNY to complain about their behavior, she says one firefighter told her, "It's Medal Day, there's nothing I can do." And the owner of a nearby deli reports, "They bought 20 six packs of Coors Light and Bud Light. They were drunk already." But come on, it's Medal Day, and that's only four beers each! Nevertheless, an FDNY spokesman promised to look into the matter.

     

Photographer Andrew Hinderaker, whose work you may have seen on Gothamist in the past, recently spent some time with the firefighters of Rescue Company 2 in Bed-Stuy, accompanying them on calls to fires, car accidents, building collapses and training exercises. His collection of photos will be exhibited at the Pratt Institute Media Arts Gallery, with an opening reception tonight from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Details here.

What started out as an ordinary Sunday shopping trip with his son erupted into a creepy fistfight for FDNY chief Butch Brandes, who says a strange man tried to snatch his 8-year-old son Jake outside Kings Plaza Mall. The two were walking on the crowded sidewalk when an unidentified man approached and started screaming that Jake was his son, not Brandes's. The man began punching Brandes after he locked Jake in his car, and they began fighting in the middle of the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Avenue V. Brandes was finally assisted by good Samaritan Kevin Williams, who tells the Daily News, "[Brandes] was yelling as he fought, 'He's trying to take my kid - can you help me?' I was able to get the man from behind and knock him to the ground. I had to do something." The unidentified attacker was taken into police custody after Williams and Brandes subdued him. Two striking photos in the News show both the assailant, who has a dead-eye stare, and an understandably freaked-out Jake clutching his real father, who suffered several bruises and cuts during the incident.

                     

Yesterday morning, the FDNY, NYPD, Port Authority Police, Office of Emergency Management and additional agencies converged on the World Trade Center PATH station in lower Manhattan to participate in a full-scale exercise—Operation Safe PATH 2009— to test their response to an improvised explosive device detonation. While PATH service was suspended and the immediate area were closed off to vehicular and pedestrian traffic, over 800 emergency responders, plus 150 volunteers who portrayed victims, participated in the drill, which involved two (simulated) explosions that occurred on a NJ-bound PATH train about 1000-1200 feet into the tunnel.

Last night, firefighters spent hours fighting a four-alarm fire that broke out at East Broadway and Pike Street in Chinatown. The fire occurred in the 6-story building that houses the Hong Kong supermarket on the ground floor; it broke out around 9:15 p.m. and the fire spread into the apartments above. Fire officials say that no residents, who were evacuated, were injured. However, four firefighters were taken to the hospital for treatment while three refused treatments. The fire was put out at around 2 a.m.; WABC 7 has video. Photo from reader Lucas

The FDNY announced yesterday that they would put a ceiling on how much overtime their firefighters could earn. The new cap will limit them to 81 and 1/4 hours per quarter, or 325 hours a year, for certain tasks that do not involve fighting fires or rescuing people. The change should also save on pension costs as well, with firefighters using overtime racked up in their final years to boost the salary used to compute how much their pension payments would be upon retiring. The Post says that with the new regulations, the earnings FDNY's top overtime earner last year would leave him "$65,407 less than he actually pulled in working in the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management and teaching mandated courses in equal employment opportunity." They were also able to find some disgruntled anonymous firefighters unhappy with the decision. One told the paper, "Closing firehouses is ridiculous, and so is cutting back overtime. Something is going to happen soon, and they're going to blame us."

Overtime costs for cops and firefighters are on the rise and City Controller William Thompson doesn't think that the mayor's budget is sufficiently accounting for it. Today Thompson is presenting his report on the budget to City Council and beforehand told reporters, "The city routinely and severely underestimates how much annual overtime will accumulate, and inevitably this widens the budget gap that will need to be closed." Thompson said that the mayor's office is undershooting the OT spending by more than $140 million in a year that saw the city pay out more in overtime than recent ones that saw the blackout, the RNC Convention and sending troops to assist Hurricane Katrina damage respectively. A spokesman for the mayor said that no matter the estimates, the city's budget will be balanced just like any other. Over the weekend, Thompson also compared Mayor Bloomberg's recent comments about the futility of taxing the rich to former President Bush's "trickle-down philosophy."

If you're looking to make a late night out of the unseasonably warm winter evening, you might want to get a head start since last call might come an hour earlier than expected tonight. Daylight-savings time officially leaps forward by an hour at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. WPIX was at the Tourneay TimeMachine in Midtown set 8,000 clocks and watches at the new time this afternoon. And while most of us just grumble over the loss of an hour of sleep, the consequences of the change can actually be much more serious. MSNBC reports that number of heart attacks ride 5% in the two weeks following the spring ahead (and decrease 5% when we fall behind). At the very least, you can take a step to keeping yourself safer by taking the FDNY's advice and changing the batteries on your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.

Yes, there is still snow on the ground and and the Gothamist thermometer barely reads over 40 degrees, but believe it or not, Spring is apparently on the way. This weekend, we turn the clocks ahead one hour for Daylight Savings Time, which the FDNY always encourages you to use as the marker to take a few minutes and replace the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.