Rochester firefighters battled a five-alarm fire in a warehouse on the city’s west side Monday evening.
One firefighter was injured as a flames engulfed a warehouse filled with pallets on Rochester’s west side this afternoon.
Crews arrived to find pallets on fire outside the 52,000-square-foot building at 301 Otis Street around 5:30 p.m. and the fire quickly extended to the structure.
“It’s a large warehouse and we’ve got heavy fire,” spokesman Capt. David Abdoch said in a live stream from the scene. “All the firefighters are working their hardest right now to extinguish it. We’re trying to do it safely.”
The second and third alarms were struck minutes apart, with the fourth and fifth alarms called as crews set up all the city’s aerial ladders and water supplies were needed to protect nearby homes from the intense flames.
Abdoch said they were using multiple master streams with the ladder pipes.
Firefighters and police went door-to-door to ensure occupants of the threatened homes were able to escape, WHEC.com reported.
Three walls and the roof collapsed, according to WROC.
Abdoch told the Democrat and Chronicle that the fire was brought under control after eight hours. Demolition equipment was utilized to remove any lingering threats from the damaged structure.
A sixth alarm was called for relief, bringing several suburban fire companies to the scene, fire officials said.
The firefighter suffered non-life threatening injuries, according to the television station.
A driver ran over a fire hose at a Los Angeles blaze, knocking down and injuring a firefighter, California officials reported.
Firefighters were called to a fire outside Synthetic Grass Depot in Tarzana at 4:49 a.m. Monday, March 13, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in an alert.
While they fought the blaze, a civilian vehicle ran over a 4-inch hose in the street, knocking down a firefighter, the alert said. The firefighter suffered minor injuries.
“Due to the location of the nearest fire hydrant to an incident, it is sometimes necessary (we avoid it whenever possible) to cross streets with the large diameter supply line,” firefighters wrote.
The alert warned drivers never to cross a fire hose, saying “the potential for life-altering injuries is very real.”
Firefighters were expected to remain at the scene through the morning to finish mopping up the blaze, the alert said.
Tarzana is a neighborhood about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The Victory Baptist Church fire in 2022 was deemed an arson.
LOS ANGELES — Less than 90 seconds after the bedside alarm broke the spell of sleep, Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Gregg Avery and his partner, Chris Klimpel, were racing out of Station 13 through the streets of Pico-Union toward Victory Baptist Church.
Their command vehicle’s lights scoured darkened storefronts. Their siren chased cars to the curb. South on the 110 Freeway, traffic was light.
Avery, 62, and Klimpel, 49, were in the 20th hour of their 24-hour shift, another day at work for the veteran firefighters with nearly 57 years of experience between them battling blazes in Los Angeles.
Yet as skilled as they are, the next half-hour would prove once again how unpredictable the most routine calls are and how quickly they can turn potentially fatal.
Avery’s and Klimpel’s recollections of that night — Sept. 11, 2022 — and a summary report by LAFD provide a harrowing account of the 30-minute battle to save the historic church. It drew upon the efforts of 150 firefighters who swarmed the property that over the course of its nearly 80 years had hosted renowned politicians, civil rights advocates and gospel musicians.
Radios, TV monitors and satellite phones in the command vehicle gave Avery and Klimpel a picture of what lay ahead. The LAFD report excerpted a few broadcasts.
“IC from SQ21, we have made entry off the Charlie side. I am going to come up front and open that door for you from the inside. First floor has smoke, no active fire inside.”
Using a rotary saw, firefighters had cut a padlock on the gate, gotten inside the fenced perimeter, forced open the side door and swung open the main doors.
Firefighters, ascending aerial ladders, had tested the roof’s strength with specialized hooks, then opened a section with a chain saw and scanned inside with a thermal imaging camera.
The fire had been burning for nearly an hour, according to the LAFD report, which placed its origin in “the crawl space underneath the raised foundation.” Flames soon rose into the attic, crowded with rafters and sheathing.
Avery, who has conducted training seminars for the department, explained the physics.
Unchecked with ample fuel and oxygen, a fire will double in size every 60 seconds, he said. Getting hotter, it soon reaches 1,128 degrees, and carbon monoxide in the smoke combusts — a flashover — propelling flames further.
Inside the attic, wood ignited, stressing and popping from the heat. Chicken wire, nailed to the joists and holding in place the thick plaster ceiling, weakened, all before anyone was on the scene. The 911 calls came at 2:22 a.m.
‘We’re pulling heavy fire’
Avery and Klimpel arrived at 2:32 a.m. The street was crowded with several ladder trucks, engine companies, a command vehicle and an ambulance. A major emergency fire, it drew upon nearly 15% of the department’s citywide workforce typically on duty each day.
Stepping out of the truck, Avery looked up and saw flames and smoke pluming into the night sky. He heard chain saws on the roof.
The job that night was straightforward, he recalled: Attack the fire, protect the property and make sure everyone stays safe. The strategy was routine: open from above (to vent the smoke), attack from below (with water from hoses).
But he and Klimpel knew the odds were long for saving the building.
“Historically, churches and supermarkets are losers,” Avery said: too much roof, too much open space. The fire develops quickly, burning hot and fast, before anyone notices.
“It’s well ahead of us by the time we get there,” Klimpel said.
An update on the tactical channel from the roof confirmed the worst. “We’ve got multiple holes. We’re pulling heavy fire.”
Avery sloughed into his heavy jacket, pulled on helmet, gloves and breathing apparatus. He checked in with the incident commander, who assigned him and Klimpel to a second-story annex, connected to the church in the back.
Before joining the firefighters who were already working that part of the fire, Avery stepped inside the church, its sanctuary. He needed to check in with the battalion chief.
A large hole in the ceiling allowed light from the fire to illuminate a succession of pews. Smoke wafted above his head.
Initial efforts to open the ceiling with 12-foot pike poles had failed. The heavy plaster, mixed with Portland cement, more than three inches thick and applied to a lath of chicken wire, required an ax to break through.
Two firefighters stood on 20-foot extension ladders and fought the flames in the attic, trying to establish a horizontal line to sweep the fire with water. Two others managed the hoses at the base of the ladders. A fifth was pulling additional hose into the church.
Avery tried not to think about the loss of this church, the center of so many people’s lives. Instead, he was calculating the risk.
Two years ago, more than 230 firefighters fought a fire on Boyd Street in downtown Los Angeles. An explosion severely injured 11, some of whom are still not back at work.
“A building on fire is a building under demolition,” Avery said, and the church was quickly falling to ruin.
‘Firefighters trapped’
Avery and Klimpel left the sanctuary. The staircase to the annex was accessed from the parking lot, but they were interrupted.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” The international signal for distress came over their radios. “We have firefighters trapped!”
Seconds earlier, a slab of plaster, weakened by the fire, had dislodged from the ceiling. It hit one firefighter on a ladder and knocked another to the ground chest first, trapping him.
“All units on the McKinley Incident, we have a Mayday in progress. Hold your radio traffic!”
Avery and Klimpel rushed back to help.
“We have had an interior roof collapse! One member trapped! Give me a [rapid intervention crew] and a rescue standing by at the front! We still have heavy attic involvement above us!”
Klimpel felt the heat of the fire, fed by a sudden intake of oxygen, surging above him. He worried about more of the ceiling falling. All he could see of the firefighter on the ground was his head and part of his shoulder beneath a pile of debris. He joined a half dozen firefighters trying to lift the slab, but it was immovable.
The captain organized their efforts — “one, two, three” — and together they tried lifting the slab.
Again: “One, two, three.”
The trapped firefighter tried shimmying out from under the weight, inches at a time.
“One, two, three.”
Seeing the rescue in progress, Avery left the sanctuary. Time lost in the rescue was time lost in fighting the fire, and he needed to join the firefighters on the second floor.
As he reached the stairs, he got an update.
“The Mayday is over, we have two members walking out right now, stable, we’ve got them out to the steps. Everyone has been accounted for.”
Avery felt relieved. He started up the stairs. On the second floor, the smoke got thicker. With less than two feet visibility, he reached for his facepiece and breather.
An earthquake
Then he felt what seemed like an earthquake. The building shuddered. He knew it was another ceiling collapse, less than three minutes after the first. He had to get back.
He ran down the stairs, and once in the parking lot, found himself still holding his facepiece. He had moved so quickly that he didn’t take time to put it back in its pouch.
The other firefighters followed. Then the radio came alive:
“IC, IC Mayday, Mayday! Division 1! We have multiple members trapped!”
Avery had to find his partner.
After the first Mayday was cleared, Klimpel was leaving the building. The main doors of the church were crowded, so he made his way to a side door, keeping his left shoulder to the wall in the dim and smoky light.
Suddenly he heard the cracking and peeling sound of the ceiling coming loose. He sensed something terrible about to happen.
“Watch out! Watch out!” he heard.
He started to run as another slab of plaster, twice as large as the first, crashed down. Fire was rolling out of the gaping hole. Men were screaming and yelling.
One firefighter was grazed by the falling slab, but another — who had been at the center of the first rescue — was caught squarely beneath it. But for his helmet, he was completely covered, like the first Mayday only this time there was more debris and it was burning.
“We have a second Mayday! Everyone on the McKinley Incident, we have a second Mayday! Clear your traffic!”
Klimpel met Avery at the side door, and they rushed back into the sanctuary.
“We have one member trapped right now, critical. Two other members unaccounted for in Division 1.”
Klimpel heard the downed man moaning and screaming.
The fire was now around them. Avery worried about the fallen man burning. The hoses they had brought in were pinned under the ceiling and inoperable. He ordered a new line. Klimpel dragged one in.
The fallen slab was so large that a chain saw was brought in. Someone spotted the cuts.
After 2 1/2 minutes, the trapped firefighter was freed. Rescue teams carried him by the cuffs outside.
“Get me out of here!” he continued to scream from the sidewalk, still traumatized by the ordeal. A cameraman across the street caught the detail on video.
Paramedics loaded the injured firefighter onto a gurney and took him to the hospital.
Life vs. property
The momentum of the battle now faltered even as the flames raged around them.
Klimpel felt the futility. They had arrived too late. The fire was too advanced. Someone had almost died. He thought about the explosion on Boyd Street two years ago. With firefighters recovering, the building has been rebuilt, and a new business is operating in that space.
“We’re 100% committed to protecting your property, but your property is not worth a firefighter getting injured,” said Avery. There is the pain and lingering trauma of course, but there is also the cost. Taking risks “is not a good business model for the department, not a good use of taxpayers’ dollars.”
With the Mayday cleared, the incident commander changed orders. The firefighters took up defensive positions.
The ladders to the roof retracted. Re-equipped, they were raised high above the flames, where water was poured into the center of the building, nearly a 1,000 gallons a minute.
Avery looked through the open doors into the sanctuary bright with flames. They had lost the church.
“It was an unfortunate chain of events, but history holds true,” Klimpel said. “Churches and supermarkets never end well.”
By 4 a.m., the blaze had been knocked down.
“There is nothing here that’s a mystery or nefarious or bad,” Avery said. “It was an unfortunate incident. Sad and horrible that we got our guys hurt and that the church was destroyed.”
The fire at Victory Baptist Church had entrapped three firefighters. Ten others had experienced near misses.
Six months later, two of the injured are still off duty, still recovering.
A veteran firefighter called a Mayday when the second-floor of a house collapsed.
Capt. John Hastings, an 18-year veteran, who was pinned under debris immediately called for help, according to WCHS.
He was rescued in about 10 minutes and transported to an area trauma center for treatment. He was in stable condition.
“We are extremely thankful for the training and skill that crews demonstrated today. We will continue to keep Captain Hastings in our thoughts, and wish him a speedy recovery,” Chief Craig Matthews said.
The incident occurred as firefighters were wrapping up a search on the first floor.
Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin said in a statement: “The men and women of the Charleston Fire Department work hard every day to keep our community safe and we were reminded, once again today, of their commitment to service and their bravery in the face of danger. Thank you to the CFD companies that responded this morning and those who helped get Captain Hastings to safety.”
The wife of a Chicago Fire Department firefighter died Thursday night, two days after the firefighter responded to a fire in his own home and tried to save her with CPR in front of the family’s Montclare house Tuesday night.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office confirmed Friday that Summer Day-Stewart, 36, had died. Her son, 7-year-old Ezra Stewart, died Wednesday night. The couple’s two other children, a 2-year-old girl and a 7-year-old girl, were last listed in critical condition.
The firefighter, Walter Stewart, heard his own address as the location of the blaze Tuesday night. A Chicago Fire Department chief drove him from a fire station 5 miles away. First responders found Day-Stewart and the three kids unconscious from smoke inhalation and in grave condition.
Outside his burning home, the young firefighter performed CPR on his now-dead wife, Fire Department spokesperson Larry Langford said.
“It’s gotta be like hell,” Langford said. “We’re doing all we can to support him.”
There were no new updates on the condition of Stewarts two other children, Langford said Friday.
The investigation into the fire, which officials believe began in the kitchen, was undetermined and suspended Friday, though it remained possible that investigators would do a forensic analysis of artifacts from the fire, Langford said.
The veteran fire spokesperson said he had never seen anything like this nightmare scenario during his many years with the department. Firefighters’ homes have caught on fire, he said. Even fire stations have caught fire, he added.
But Langford said he couldn’t remember the department facing a tragedy like this.
“As long as I’ve been associated with fires, I can’t fathom what he’s going through. It’s just unbelievable. I can’t even think of what it feels like,” he said.
The department is raising money to help Stewart’s family face the “unspeakable tragedy” through its charity, Ignite the Spirit.
March 10, 2023 Chief of the FDNY Fire Academy Assistant Chief Charles “Chuck” Downey and Assistant Chief Kevin Brennan are the latest to send requests to the commissioner.
Two more staff chiefs at FDNY headquarters have asked to be demoted and put back in the field as the shakeup in the department continues, the Daily News has learned.
The two new requests from Assistant Chief Kevin Brennan and Deputy Assistant Chief Charles “Chuck” Downey, the chief of the FDNY Fire Academy, landed on FDNY Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh’s desk this week as the department went ahead with three demotions that prompted several top chiefs to ask for a drop in rank, two sources with knowledge of the drama said.
It brings the number of demoted or dissatisfied chiefs looking for a way out of headquarters to about 10, although the number couldn’t be officially confirmed. There are only 23 staff chiefs in the entire FDNY, sources said.
“At this point it’s easier to count the number of people who didn’t [ask for demotions] instead of the people who have,” one source said.
The demotion requests are a moot point, however, at least in the short term. Kavanagh hasn’t signed off on any of the requests. She’s asked the chiefs to hang on for three more months while she “rights the ship” and they have agreed, sources said.
The turmoil in the department’s upper ranks came into full view last month after The News broke a story about how two top uniformed FDNY officials stepped down to protest Kavanagh demoting three other chiefs.
Assistant Chiefs Michael Gala, Joseph Jardin and Fred Schaaf have been demoted and detailed back to FDNY headquarters, but their new roles are not clear, according to a department source with knowledge of the situation.
The undercurrent of distrust came to a head on Feb. 3, when Kavanagh demoted Gala, Jardin and Schaaf, and held a meeting with the remaining staff chiefs, complaining that they hadn’t brought her any new ideas.
“Folks say we have to to have our car with us at all times,” one chief asked at the meeting. “But if I have to go into Nassau for something personal, now I have to have my car with me. How do I balance that?”
Kavanagh wasn’t pleased that her requests were landing on deaf ears.
“Is it fair to say that despite the point I made, the majority of the questions here today were about pay and vacation and cars?” Kavanagh asked the chiefs, according to the recording.
After hearing that Gala, Jardin and Schaaf were demoted, several other chiefs, including Chief of Department John Hodgens, the FDNY’s most senior uniformed official, Chief of Fire Operations John Esposito and Chiefs Michael Massucci and Frank Leeb all requested to be demoted and put back in the field in solidarity.
At about the same time, two other chiefs made the same request, but not in writing, sources said.
The chiefs filed a lawsuit against Kavanagh and the city claiming the demotions have left the city’s firefighting forces with an “unimaginable level of unpreparedness” — including leaving the department without anyone who has ever led the scene at a five-alarm fire.
“Our leadership team has centuries of combined experience within the FDNY and the department’s chiefs are fully committed to keeping our members and the city safe,” an FDNY spokeswoman said Thursday. “To be clear, no chief position is vacant or unoccupied. New Yorkers can rest assured that, under Commissioner Kavanagh’s leadership, the FDNY remains fully prepared to keep New Yorkers safe and respond to all emergencies.”
Whenever Billy Moon marched in a local St. Patrick’s Day parade, he always wore a special helmet.
It was a custom green helmet that he painted himself.
Tragically, Moon,47, was killed in a training accident back in December when he fell 20 feet while preparing for a drill inside Rescue Company 2 in Brooklyn.
He and his crew were training on how to rescue window washers trapped on immobile platforms hundreds of feet in the air, FDNY officials said.
Moon joined the FDNY in 2002 and spent most of his career at Ladder Company 133 in Jamaica, Queens, before moving to Rescue 2, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said at the time. He also served as a member of the Islip Fire Department on Long Island and was their Chief of Department in 2017.
So, when the Islip Fire Department was asked to march in last weekend’s annual East Islip Saint Patrick’s Day parade, they decided to pay tribute to their ex-chief.
The Islip Fire Department Band performed in identical helmets to the one made by their brother.
The band even stopped during the parade to play a song for Moon’s family, which they shared on their Facebook page.
Mar. 9—A large fire at a vacant house on North Broadway Street where five people were found dead Wednesday is one of the deadliest in Dayton.
“Five total victims have been located at this time, making this one of the most tragic fire incidents for loss of life in the history of the City of Dayton,” the Dayton Fire Department said Wednesday night.
The victims have not been identified. The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office is working with the fire department to determine their causes of death.
It was the second fire after which a person was found dead in Dayton this year. On Sunday, 71-year-old Darlene Alston was found dead following a house fire in the 300 block of Ashwood Avenue. That fire also remains under investigation.
While the causes of death in this week’s fires are still being determined, there were six fire fatalities reported over the previous three years.
Dayton had three deadly fires last year, one in 2021 and two in 2020. Each fire resulted in one fatality.
Fire crews responded at 3:58 a.m. to the fire in the 500 block of North Broadway Street and were at the scene for about 18 hours.
Responding crews could see heavy smoke from more than a mile away and arrived to find a large two-story house with heavy fire showing from the back of the house on both floors. Crews went inside to search for any occupants and to control the fire.
Within four minutes of arriving and entering the house, the incident commander ordered all crews out due to the intense fire conditions and concerns of a collapse, according to the fire department.
Once the fire was under control, the incident commander called for the house to be demolished. During demolition Wednesday morning, crews found the first victim in the debris near the back of the house and demolition was immediately halted.
The coroner’s office responded and two cadaver dogs were requested to assist with the search for any additional bodies.
A second body was discovered Wednesday afternoon, and the third was recovered at about 6:45 p.m. The corner’s office confirmed later Wednesday night that five total bodies had been recovered.
The house where the bodies were found was vacant and hadn’t had gas service since 2013. However, neighbors reported seeing people come and go from the residence.
Demolition at the scene continued Thursday morning. Fire crews are continuing to investigate the cause of the fire.
