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. UFA head Steve Cassidy says the fire response time in Queens is 5 minutes, which is the slowest in the city. Plus, the new policy gives too few details - mainly the address, not details like......

At the southeast corner of Lafayette and Spring in the SoHo-Nolita area, some sort of event (explosion?) occurred to knock off the heavy grates off the surface. The FDNY and NYPD closed down the street; it didn't look like a steampipe explosion or water main break (no water) - it looks more like an underground transformer vault (if anyone knows what these are, let us know in comments) explosion. The 6 line does run......

Yesterday morning, a fire broke out in Fort Greene apartment, where seven family members lived. The NY Post reports three relatives - a father and his two sons - were saved by a "Brooklyn vagrant on a breakfast beer run." Dubbed "SUPERTRAMP" in the headline, Andre Nash had just bought two cans of beer when a boy was asking for help and pointing to the the 11th floor of a building at the Lafayette Gardens......

NYC: Daily News Building, by wallyg at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: an injured police officer at Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn, a gas leak on South 8th St. and Wythe Ave. in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery at the North Fork branch on 87th St. and Broadway in Manhattan. The FDNY will be stationing a battalion chief at the Deutsche Bank building until it is fully dismantled. Someone in the Clinton campaign said......

How do you get rid of an unwanted fire truck? Simple, put it on Craigslist! That is exactly what the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC) did with an unused 1993 Pierce aerial platform truck they inherited from the Coast Guard when the city-state agency took control over Governors Island in 2003. They got over $75,000 from the East Prospect Fire Company in York County, Pennsylvania near Lancaster. That is a pretty good deal......

Photographs by SilvaAzniv on Flickr (left, right); the steam in the right photo is from Con Ed - not a fire At West End Avenue and West 59th Street, a water main broke, flooding the Amtrak tracks. The FDNY is pumping out the water and a number of other city agencies, including the Office of Emergency Management and Department of Environmental Protection are on the scene. According to other reports, a new building (an......

Yesterday, separate fires in Harlem and in the Bronx each claimed a life. The fire in the Bronx occurred at 1317 West Farms Road around 11AM. An elderly man was found in his living room apartment; three other residents treated at a hospital. The FDNY believes the fire was accidental. Around 6AM, the Harlem fire on West 127th Street was reported. A woman was found dead on the top floor of a vacant building and......

A West Harlem co-op fire eventually required the efforts of 170 firefighters to extinguish as it spread through the West 113th St. building 's second, third, and fourth floors. Despite the fast-moving flames, three sisters and their 34-year-old father were rescued from the fifth floor of the building before they were overcome by smoke. According to the Daily News, 8-year-old Tanesha Spaulding told her father Lenny that she smelled smoke. Opening the front door of......

Photograph of the Trump Soho this morning by Riccardo Sinti Work has been stopped at the Trump Soho construction site, the day after an accident caused one worker to fall 42 stories to his death. The FDNY says the workers had been filling wooden forms (one was a 20-foot-square section) with wet concrete when molds broke. Assistant Chief Thomas Galvin explained that the molds collapsed from the 42nd floor to the 40th, leaving a......

Another pot farm bites the dust: A small fire in Queens led the Fire Department to over 200 marijuana plants growing inside a home. The FDNY wanted to inspect some smoking utility lines and entered another home at 61-20 Bleecker Street to turn off the electricity. When they got to Ridgewood home's basement, they found 217 pot plants, ranging in height from 2 to 6 feet, plus three illegal propane tanks. The home's occupant who......

When fighting a fire in Bedford-Stuyvesant, firefighter saved a three-year-old girl who was left alone in a house on Stuyvesant Avenue. The FDNY responded at 7:23PM and heard the girl's cries coming from the rear of the house. An FDNY spokesman explained to the NY Times, "The fire was between them and the girl. Normally they would pull the door to the fire room closed, but there was no door to pull closed, so they......

A 56-year-old man in the Flatlands section died in his apartment after his cigarette started a fire. Sixty fire fighters responded to the one alarm fire that broke out around 7:45AM on 1275 East 51 Street. The FDNY had it under control within 20 minutes of responsing, but they were unable to save the apartment's dweller, Harvey Kudisch. Neighbors describe the widower as a heavy smoker, with one telling the Post, "The smoke got so......

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. Monahan's father had tried to rescue him from outside......

A fire late last night in the Staten Island neighborhood of Prince's Bay claimed the life of a nine-year-old boy. Thomas Monahan Jr., who was unable to escape the fire at 49 Princewood Ave. was pronounced dead at 1:45 a.m. at Staten Island University Hospital. The boy's father Thomas Monahan desperately attempted to save his son after he, his wife and his 8-year-old daughter escaped safely. Monahan reportedly tried to save Thomas Jr. by climbing......

Earlier this morning, an MTA bus collided with a school van transporting children in Fresh Meadows, Queens. Details of the accident are thin, but initial reports say that up to 9 people are injured, most of which are children. The collision occurred just after 8 a.m. when the Q46 bus struck the van. The FDNY says that two critically injured children were sent to Long Island Jewish Hospital with one other child. Three other children......

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......

An off-duty firefighter was charged with misdemeanor assault after he beat up a Brooklyn motorist in front of the driver's wife and two sons. Michael Crespo, who is a 28-year-old copier technician, says that he was driving in Brooklyn when Stephen Spagnola jaywalked in front of his car. Spagnola, who is with FDNY Engine Co. 28 and also posed as Mr. September in the 2005 edition of the FDNY's racy Calendar of Heroes, objected to......

We love timely tips from the FDNY! The Fire Department is reminding New Yorkers that deep-frying turkeys is very, very dangerous. Why? Well, the fryers easily tip over and many fryers don't have automatic temperature control. Also, "oil may spill from the fryer onto the burner causing a fire." Underwriters Laboratories has a video of what can go wrong during turkey deep-frying and it is insane. It does seem like there's at least one deep-fried......

Over a hundred firefighters responded to a three-alarm fire at 80 Pine Street in Lower Manhattan last night. The fire broke out on the 29th floor, where money management firm Tullett & Tokyo has offices. It's unclear what started the fire, but around 12:30AM, flames were "shooting out of the windows" according to WABC 7. Glass fell onto Maiden Lane, narrowly missing pedestrians. The FDNY closed down the street and was able to put out......

Passengers on a PATH train from Newark to the World Trade Center station had a shaky ride this afternoon. The train started to shudder from side to side, causing a motorman to stop the train. WNBC reports that at least 30 people were injured, with "as many as 10 passengers...taken off the train on backboards." Hours earlier, a train on the M line derailed at Chambers Street. There were no passengers, just transit workers, and......

This morning, a home in Rosedale, at 267th Street and 149th Road, caught fire. Two people have been killed, as the second floor of the two-family home collapsed. The call about the came at 4:58AM and neighbors say that a mother and two children lived in the home. Firefighters reportedly saw victims trapped on the second floor, but were unable to rescue them. The FDNY fought the fire from the outside and the fire was......

The FDNY was fighting a fire in a Cypress Hills apartment building when they found a dead woman. The authorities believe the 37-year-old was shot by her boyfriend and then set on fire, but the ME's office will determine the cause of death. The woman's body was found on the 6th floor. WABC 7 reports that a man was seen running out of the building at 10:30PM, "looking like 'a human torch.'" Apparently that man......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A perp search at Roma Road and St. George in Staten Island, an overturned car at 2nd Avenue and 36th Street in Manhattan and a shark DOA in the Rockaways. The FDNY responded to an apartment fire and found a 4-year-old child who apparently witnessed her mother's boyfriend kill her mother then himself this morning. Why won't the city fix a sinkhole in a Staten Island street? Because the......

Yesterday evening, Bovis Lend Lease, the contractor charged with dismantling the WTC-dust contaminated Deutsche Bank building, faced an angry group of residents and lawmakers during a crowded community meeting. The seven-alarm fire on August 18, which claimed the lives of two firefighters, was likely started by construction workers smoking, which is against the rules in the highly flammable environment. Investigation after the fire found that the demolition site was essentially a "deathtrap," with a standpipe,......

Wow - the NY Post got a hold of a FDNY battalion chief's 2005 memo that clearly outlines a plan for fighting fires at the Deutsche Bank building. The FDNY had admitted last week that it did not have a pre-fire plan before the August 18 fire that required over 200 firefighters and took the lives of two. The Post has two pages of Battalion Chief William Siegel's memo (page 1, 2), which included......

The FDNY did not inspect the Deutsche Bank building every 15 days, "as required by city rules for buildings being demolished" (NY Times). This revelation, coupled with the fact that the FDNY did not have a plan to go into the burning building, prompts the Post to demand that Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta leave his post. The city's official update about the investigation into the Saturday fire, which required 275 firefighters and claimed the lives......

On Thursday night, a fire broke out in a Sunnyside apartment. Firefighters were able to save three children - 1-year-old twins and a 6-year-old - as well as their 59-year-old grandmother Carmen Ospina, who had been watching them. However, they were not able to save their 2-year-old brother C.J., a fact that Opsina lamented, "There's one missing. I barely had enough hands to rescue them." Sixty firefighter had responded to the scene, which took an......

Earlier this week, the FDNY Foundation, a non-profit that raises money for FDNY causes, released the 2008 edition of its popular Calendar of Heroes, featuring some of the Bravest's bare-chested hunks posing in all parts of New York City and thrilling many. But after the calendar crew appeared on the Today show, the eagle-eyed realized that cover boy Michael Biserta, of Ladder Co. 131 in Red Hook, was also featured in a Guys Gone Wild......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a motorcycle jacking at 230th Place and 148th Ave. in Queens, shots fired at police at Gates and Nostrand Aves. in Brooklyn, and multiple pedestrians struck at Coney Island and Ditmas Aves. in Brooklyn. State and city politicians broke ground in the Bronx yesterday on a new Metro-North station stop at the under-construction Yankee Stadium. It's hoped that the transit option will cut down on auto traffic from upstate......

Yesterday morning, a 30-foot-long section of parapet onto the sidewalk at Grand Concourse near 183rd Street in the Bronx, injuring a women and two boys, ages 10 and 12. One boy, Damian Rosa, had his left foot amputated, while his stepbrother (or half-brother; reports differ) Frank Jones suffered a "collapsed lung, broken leg, and head injuries" as well as liver damage. According to Rosa's grandmother, the kids were looking forward to a day at the......