The woman who is suspected of killing her fire marshal husband expects to be indicted. Grand jury proceedings will begin tomorrow, and Janet Redmond-Mercereau's attorney Mario Gallucci told WNBC, "It's a weak circumstantial case that we will fight aggressively...Janet can look forward to a long and satisfying life outside of prison." Douglas Mercereau was found dead in his Staten Island home on December 4 last year. The murder weapon was his service weapon, and he......

Following two incidents in recent years that highlighted the occasionally raucous atmospheres of City firehouses, the FDNY is cracking down on what it considers improper names for certain houses, like the Happy Hookers in Red Hook, Southern Comfort on Staten Island, Animal House in the Bronx, and The Nut House in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The names and logos of these firehouses came under scrutiny following an incident on New Year's Eve 2003, when an argument over Elvis......

From 1970 until 1996, when it was merged into the FDNY, most of the city’s Emergency Medical Services needs were performed by New York City Emergency Medical Service (NYC EMS). It was part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation for all of its existence starting as a “scoop and run” operation and eventually incorporating paramedics who were able to render aid in the field. This ten minute video from the early......

The Bronx DA's office says an 83-year-old engineer lied about using steel in a building that caught fire and collapsed and left two firefighters dead in 2006. Jose Vargas, who pleaded not guilty, was arraigned in court yesterday. The three-alarm fire broke out at a 99-cent store on Walton Avenue on August 27, 2006; the building's roof and first floor collapsed, killing Lieutenant Howard Carpluk Jr. and firefighter Michael Reilly. Vargas, who signed inspection papers......

Photographs of the USS New York (above) and christening (below) by Bill Haber/AP Yesterday, a christening ceremony was held in a Louisiana for the latest naval ship bearing the name USS New York. While there have been five other ships with the same name, this "amphibious transport dock ship" was named to honor the state after September 11. In 2002, Governor Pataki asked then Secretary of the Navy (now Deputy Secretary of Defense) Gordon......

After being fired for speaking to a reporter, a lawyer who had represented a slain firefighter's family in their lawsuit against the city is now suing the widow and her children. Way to keep those bad stereotypes about lawyers going! After the summer's deadly Deutsche Bank fire, where firefighters Robert Beddia, 56, and Joseph Graffagnino, 34, died, their families indicated they would sue for up to $180 million. Which would be a payday for any......

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......

Museum Guard, by Atomische at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Amboy Rd. in Staten Island, another bank robbery on 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and a scaffolding collapse on Grand Concourse and 149th St. in the Bronx. A building slated for destruction on Governors Island will become a lab for the FDNY to examine the dynamics of high-rise fires and how best to defeat them. Fire crews from cities around the......

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, a two-alarm fire broke out in a Corona home and after firefighters put it out, they found the body of 5-year-old Jason Guallpa, curled up behind a TV. The police later arrested his 24-year-old brother Diego with endangering the welfare of a child. Diego Guallpa was supposed to be baby-sitting his younger brother, but he decided to meet his accountant and file his tax returns. He left little Jason in the home alone (a......

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed $464,600 in fines over two contractors' safety lapses at the Deutsche Bank building. Contractor Bovis Lend Lease, which had been retained by the state government, and its former subcontractor John Galt Corporation had been dismantling the building when a seven-alarm fire, caused by a worker's smoking, broke out last August. Two firefighters died during the blaze, it was revealed pieces of the standpipe (which lets water for firefighters......

Crazy! Gowanus Lounge posted this video of a car on fire in the Greenwood Heights section of Brooklyn. The video shows the FDNY extinguishing the fire, and GL followed up with an eyewitness account from Greenwood Heights resident Aaron Brashear (who's also in the Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights). Brashear said when he looked outside, some teenage girls were yelling, "*Oh, sh*t, that's our car*!" He added that another "long time resident swore it......

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......

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. The incident occurred on November 23, 2006, after Maietta called 911 with health complaints and asked to be taken to a hospital. The man weighs 515 pounds,......

Alwyn Court, by edEx at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: serious trauma at Attorney and Houston Sts. in Manhattan, a water rescue at 1st St. and Astoria Blvd. in Queens, and a gas leak on Kingsland Ave. in Brooklyn. The NYPD and FDNY collaborated yesterday to put divers in the dark and frigid waters off a jetty at Orchard Beach in the Bronx, in order to rescue a 14-year-old boy trapped in the rocks......

The sister of the 23-year FDNY veteran who died during the Deutsche Bank building last August is suing city agencies and contractors, citing their "wanton, willful, and reckless conduct" in his death. The Deutsche Bank building had been undergoing a slow dismantling process, and a worker's cigarette likely started the 7-alarm fire. Robert Beddia, 53, (pictured) and Joseph Graffagnino, 34, died on the 14th floor, when they ran out of oxygen (the FDNY tapes are......

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......

A piece in The New York Times today shows that that the residents of 475 Kent are not prepared to go quietly after their recent eviction due to fire safety violations. Even the landlord of the owner of the nearly block-long building near the Navy Yard in Brooklyn wants his tenants back in and is cooperating with them to that end. The City and the Fire Dept. so far have been unyielding. At issue, they......

Demonstrating just how valuable free parking in New York City is, a rash of smash and grab thefts has struck areas in Washington Heights and the Bronx, where firefighters have had their car windows broken and parking placards stolen. Most of the thefts have occurred right outside of firehouses, usually when members are called out to a fire, according to the New York Post. The recent increase in placard jacking began shortly after Mayor Bloomberg......

A real estate agent who was handling the sale of a foreclosed houes in Jamaica, Queens discovered 100 marijuana plants inside. The subprime meltdown really is hitting all corners of the city. WCBS 2 reports that the discovery was made on Thursday afternoon and police removed all the plants from 170-04 118th Avenue. No further details were available, but we're guessing the previous occupants weren't able to rent a van to remove their goods.......

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......

Some troubling news about yesterday's three-alarm fire at 200 East 72nd Street which left 19 firefighters and 14 resident injured. Apparently the fire alarm system had been undergoing repairs (there were complaints about "multiple false alarms" according to the Sun), which led to chaos. The building is "fireproof," and the FDNY says residents should have just stayed in their apartment, but many tried to leave the building. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer issued a following......

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......

Yesterday's fire at Lydig Avenue and White Plains Road in the Bronx ended up being a five-alarm blaze that tore through twelve businesses. Over 200 firefighters from 44 units were on the scene to fight the fire, which started around 8AM; the fifth alarm was called before 10AM, and the fire was under control by 11:39AM. The fire started in a laundromat and spread to other businesses, many of which do not have insurance. The......

Today's high winds may be to blame for a construction worker's death in Fort Greene. Around 10AM, the FDNY tells WNBC that a "construction worker had been working on the 13th floor when are large gust of wind picked up the scaffold he was standing on and blew him over the edge and on to a setback at street level." The other worker, who was knocked from the 13th floor scaffolding to the 10th floor,......

Untitled photo of dancers, by Raymond Haddad at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an escaped patient on the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens, a homicide on Bruner and Burke Aves. in the Bronx, and shots fired on Bainbridge St. and Lewis Ave. in Brooklyn. Jurors in the Nixzmary Brown murder trial were sent home for the second consecutive day Thursday as the defense, prosecution, and judge met in secret to discuss potentially bombshell......

Last October, a fire was started outside the Engine 34/Ladder 21 firehouse on West 38th Street. The fire was put out, but upon investigation, it turned out the ones who set it were firefighters from different firehouses! A surveillance cameras actually captured Michael Izzo and Richard Capece purchasing the gasoline at a gas station and later splashing the stationhouse's garage door and igniting it, setting off what was described as a fireball. The pair were......

Photos via loveitmadly's flickr. On Sunday Gowanus Lounge received frantic emails from tenants in a blocklong loft building at 475 Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg who were being suddenly tossed out into the frigid night by the FDNY; we went to the building on Monday morning and talked to some of the shell-shocked residents as they moved out, one of whom told us, “Sheila [Properties] owns the whole lot and I don’t want to......

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......