A retired FDNY 9/11 hero was tapped as Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh’s second in command Saturday.
As the department’s First Deputy Commissioner, retired Assistant Chief Joseph Pfeifer, 67, will hold the second-highest civilian rank in the FDNY, the department said.
Pfeifer, who retired in 2018, “served as one of New York City’s Bravest for decades,” Kavanagh said in a statement. “(He) created partnerships and programs that enhanced the safety and training of our members, and has always been there for our city, especially on our darkest days.
“Having already worked closely with Joe for many years, I am thrilled he has returned home to the FDNY and joined our executive leadership team,” she said.
Mayor Adams hailed the hire on Saturday, claiming Pfeifer “embodies what it means to be New York’s Bravest.”
Pfeifer joined the fire department in 1981 and was the first FDNY chief to respond to the World Trade Center on 9/11. His brother, FDNY Lt. Kevin Pfeifer, died in the terror attack.
The retired chief has been credited with founding the department’s Center for Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness. He was also the FDNY’s chief of Counterterrorism and Emergency Preparedness for 17 years after 9/11, where he helped shape strategic planning, intelligence sharing and interagency response to terror related incidents, department officials said.
“With nearly 40-years of experience with the FDNY, he is an excellent choice to assume one of the highest-ranking positions in this great department and is someone that New Yorkers and firefighters can count on to innovate in all aspects of fire prevention and safety,” Mayor Adams said.
Kavanagh was the FDNY’s first deputy fire commissioner under former Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro. When she became acting fire commissioner after Nigro retired last year, Lizette Christoff, the department’s deputy commissioner of budget and finance, was made acting first deputy fire commissioner.
No one has taken on the position full time since Kavanagh was promoted, FDNY officials said.
Since he retired, Pfeifer has been an adjunct associate professor in Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs and the director of crisis leadership at the Columbia Climate School’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
The retired chief said he is looking forward to his new challenge.
“The heart of FDNY is the ability to unify efforts to solve complex problems in the face of great tragedy,” Pfeifer said. “Our united team is a sign of resilience to reflect on the past and envision the future so that we can enhance the present.”
As of Friday, at least six staff chiefs, including Chief of Department John “Jack” Hodgens, the most senior uniformed official in the FDNY, have asked to be demoted to deputy chief and be moved back to the field, claiming that there’s been a complete breakdown of communication between Kavanagh and the FDNY’s highest uniformed ranks. The chiefs are asking to be moved into their new roles by March 6.
Hodgens and the other chiefs asked to be reassigned after Kavanagh demoted Assistant Chiefs Fred Schaaf, Michael Gala and Joseph Jardin to deputy chief, and then called other top chiefs on the carpet in a closed door Feb. 3 meeting where she demanded more out of the box thinking and fewer inquiries about vacation rollovers and personal cars.
“The lack of transparency and the lack of truthfulness, not only with me but with the entire Uniformed Executive Staff, has brought me to this decision,” Deputy Assistant Chief Michael Massucci wrote this week as he asked to be booted back to deputy chief.
A high-ranking FDNY source with knowledge of the ongoing turmoil didn’t believe Pfeifer could bring the outraged staff chiefs back into the fold.
“He has a bit of history with the fire department and has some gravitas, but some are angry he took the job,” the source said about Pfeifer. “He’s going to bring some credibility to Kavanagh when the other chiefs leave, but that’s about it.”
A Georgia firefighter on the lam from Alabama for a felony charge is still getting paid.
Douglas County Firefighter Daymetrie Williams has been on paid leave since November, according to 11 Alive.
The felony burglary charge occurred two years before he was hired in Georgia in 2021.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that the fire department didn’t do a background check on him until March 2022, almost a year after he was hired.
Williams’ personnel file, obtained by reporters, showed he was written up twice in the span of a few months. He got a written reprimand for an “altercation with an employee” and probation for “unwanted leering.”
Checking with universities where he claimed to have obtained degrees in fire science and psychology proved interesting.
West Virginia University said it had no record of Williams even attending its campus, let alone earning a fire science degree while West Virginia State University confirmed he graduated, but did not obtain a degree in psychology, the station reported.
County officials provided a short statement saying the county is investigating the allegations.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh reported that 22 firefighters were hurt, three seriously, while battling a fire in Arden Heights on Staten Island.
“I cannot emphasize enough that this was a very close call for the FDNY. We could have lost three members today,” Kavanagh told reporters.
According to CBS 2 New York, the fire started in a two-family home on Shotwell Avenue at around 1:30 p.m and quickly grew to four alarms.
An FDNY official confirmed part of the home collapsed, but firefighters “were not trapped in the collapse.”
“Members were trapped in the heavy fire,” said FDNY Chief Brian Gorman.
Kavanagh was joined by other fire department officials, along with doctors at Staten Island University Hospital.
“It was thanks to the brave work of our members, including those who went in and saved their fellow firefighters, rescued the trapped members, brought them to EMS on scene who treated them immediately, and brought them to this hospital, who treated them right away, which is why we are here to say that they are stable while critical, but that they are going to be OK,” she told reporters.
FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said, “There was a heavy wind condition at the fire, so as the firefighters were inside searching for occupants, the windows failed and the wind blew the fire intensely into the building right at the firefighters.
“So all of them became trapped by fire. One was able to make their way to a balcony and jump off the second floor balcony down into the driveway. And one transmitted a mayday signal that he was in distress, and he was on the second floor.”
That lieutenant was rescued.
“All in all, we’re very happy to report that the members are in stable condition. It was definitely what we consider a close call today,” Hodgens said.
Feb. 17, 2023 If the nearest Level I trauma center is more than a certain distance away, NASCAR requires the host facility to have a helicopter and a paramedic-staffed ambulance on site.
Driver Ty Gibbs (54) exits his after an on-track incident during practice for the NASCAR Clash at the Coliseum at Los Angeles Coliseum.
LOS ANGELES — Flames shot up inside NASCAR Cup Series driver Ty Gibbs’ Toyota while the 20-year-old practiced for the Clash inside the LA Coliseum. As Gibbs pulled over, unhooked his belts and hurried out the window, AMR safety vehicles navigated the unique quarter-mile temporary circuit — a track that didn’t exist just weeks earlier — and within seconds, deployed their equipment to douse the flames and preserve the race car.
The sight of an emergency vehicle on the playing surface — an ambulance on the field of Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during a Monday Night Football game against the Bengals — halted the sports world in its tracks a few weeks before the fire on the Coliseum floor. Millions of people watched in real time as the NFL’s emergency action plan was set in motion.
“One of my co-workers sent me a text, ‘Are you watching this?’ ” said Tom Bryant, NASCAR’s vice president of racing operations.
The emergency response that followed Hamlin’s collapse was a public display of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into these kinds of scenarios, especially in motorsports, where first responders arrive within seconds of an incident.
Had Gibbs, or any other driver, needed emergency medical attention, what was the plan for a venue that’s relatively new to the series? What does the safety plan look like for the racers and fans at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, which is situated among open thoroughfares in a bustling downtown area? How about the city streets of Chicago, which is set to see a new NASCAR race later this year? What happens if an NHRA racer suffers injuries in a high-speed crash?
Motorsports has developed detailed answers after Dale Earnhardt was killed during the 2001 Daytona 500 and NHRA Funny Car driver Scott Kalitta died after a qualifying attempt in Englishtown, N.J., in 2008. IndyCar’s aeroscreen protects drivers from flying objects, which killed British driver Justin Wilson in 2015 when he was struck in the head by debris from a single-car crash ahead of him.
Motorsports safety initiatives, from belts to helmets and chassis and safety barriers, continue to evolve with advances in technology. Ryan Newman credited NASCAR’s innovations and his Arai carbon fiber zero helmet with helping him survive a massive midair Daytona 500 crash in 2020, after which he needed to be rescued from his upside-down car.
Racing operations officials, track safety officials and motorsports series medical directors shared more about what happens if an emergency situation like Hamlin’s were to happen at a local racetrack or a venue on their calendar.
By air or by ground?
For drivers who need urgent care beyond the infield care center, if the nearest Level I trauma center is more than a certain distance away (about a 20-minute drive), NASCAR requires the host facility to have a medevac (helicopter) on site, as well as an advanced life support ambulance, even if there is a helicopter, just as a backup. There’s also a backup trauma center and designated burn center (which sometimes can be a different entity from the trauma center).
Halifax Medical Center, a Level II trauma center, is located a little more than a mile from Daytona International Speedway, which counts the Daytona 500, Rolex 24 and Welcome to Rockville music festival among its marquee events.
For events on temporary street circuits like Long Beach, which hosts IndyCar, IMSA, Stadium Super Trucks and more, street races “don’t have the best ingress and egress to get in and out of,” said Tim Baughman, IndyCar’s senior director of track safety and medical services. The Long Beach Fire Department has transport units set up on the periphery and location points where they can go across the track and then transport people to the trauma center.
For NHRA events, some racetracks have an onsite helicopter, or at a site close to the facility. Depending on the venue, ground transport could be considered quicker, based on average transport time communicated by county authorities. (Ground transport is just as quick or quicker if it’s needed at Pomona.)
“It’s all a calculus on what is the quickest way to get the patient to the Level I trauma center,” said Dr. Phil Surface, NHRA’s medical director and on-site medical services leader at national events. “People will think lots of times, well, helicopter would be faster, and that’s maybe true. But people forget that it frequently takes, for the helicopter to get spooled up and running, upwards of seven, eight, ten minutes. … If you had the helicopter running and the pilots included in it, it might be quicker via helicopter, but when you consider that, that’s not a reasonable thing. [They] can’t just sit there with the engine running all day and waiting.”
What if a driver suffers burns? In some locations around the U.S., the burn center is not necessarily at the closest Level I trauma center.
“Current emergency medicine techniques are such that you should transport to the nearest Level I trauma center and stabilize [the patient] prior to transferring to a burn center,” said Surface.
Know your teammates
In July, NASCAR will race through the streets of Chicago for the first time. Safety meetings with the city’s large event coordinator and the medical team that supports large events like Lollapalooza have been taking place monthly, starting well before the race was made official. Those meetings, which can start as early as six months in advance, will ramp up closer to race weekend. (It’s about six weeks out for returning facilities, plus meetings the week of the event.)
When the Coliseum, which hosted its second Clash on Feb. 5, or any new track joins the schedule, series like NASCAR and IndyCar tour each facility before any on-track activity to view minute details and walk through the emergency plan, such as:
— the rooms where drivers would be taken
— which medical personnel will accompany the driver
— who will transport the family members
“Our model, the care center is staffed by doctors and nurses from a local regional medical facility. So they already have relationships with the other doctors and nurses at that medical facility, which is super important when you are in an emergency situation and you’re dealing with a patient or multiple patients who are in an emergency situation,” Bryant said.
IndyCar follows a similar process to establish rapport with new partner medical facilities, and spells out what medical care the series provides and what is needed from the off-site medical providers.
“They understand that our cars could crash at 80 to 100 miles an hour and it’s not going to be like a normal incident out on the street because our cars are designed to absorb those crashes. So those types of information is shared,” Baughman said.
In early February, IndyCar debuted a new mobile medical unit that will help evaluate competitors and others who need medical attention for potential transfer to off-site care centers. The transporter holds two hospital beds, equipment needed to care for patients with urgent needs, (including a resuscitation cart, assorted orthopedic care supplies and a portable X-ray machine), a meeting area for patient consultation and emergency updates, and video feeds to monitor on-track activity.
Practice
Several hundred fire and safety team members from tracks that host NASCAR, IndyCar and IMSA events attended NASCAR’s preseason summit, a hands-on, four-day training event in January in Concord, N.C. The setup at Charlotte Motor Speedway included scenario training events: extricating a driver from a chassis, fighting a fire, cutting a windshield and cutting a frame.
“All the things that we hope we don’t have to do,” Bryant said.
“We cut up a bunch of sheet metal and a bunch of metal tubing and lit a bunch of stuff on fire and made a hell of a mess. It was tremendous training — if you talk to those folks, they’ll say it’s the best training they get.”
IndyCar, which has a partnership with IU (Indiana University) Health, has a “unique hybrid safety and medical team,” said Dr. Julia Vaizer, IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s director of medical services.
“We call them separate, right? We can say medical team, we have a different safety team, but we work together,” Vaizer said. “We train, we do everything together. Our physicians train with the safety team in firefighter practices and extrication training because we want our physicians to know the steps that the safety team will be performing so they can anticipate that and we go the same way for our paramedics team.”
NHRA’s traveling safety team, like its counterparts, is comprised of firefighters, paramedics and EMTs who are trained in motorsports injuries, evacuation and extrication. When they are not at the track, many of these professionals work in local emergency rooms and health care professions. They continually stay up to date on training and certifications.
“We have a really time-tested safety team,” Surface said. “It’s well trained, has a long history and we work well with the local firefighters, medics and EMTs. With that backup in place, we tend to do a pretty good job.”
Hamlin’s incident resonated throughout motorsports. NASCAR discussed it. Medical professionals observed the process. Through the lens of first responders, there’s always a takeaway.
“Anytime something like this happens, you just review your own procedures,” Vaizer said. “You’re making sure that everything is set, that the team knows everybody’s job, and they’re doing what they’re meant to do as a specific member of the team.”
Feb. 17, 2023 The incident left 21 dead as patrons raced to leave the overcrowded club.
By Adriana Pérez, Rosemary Sobol, Deanese Williams-Harris Source Chicago Tribune (TNS) Distributed byTribune Content Agency, LLC.
A victim is rushed to an ambulance,
Torriana Cox doesn’t remember much about her mother. After all, she was only 3 and her brother barely a few weeks old on the day when their mother, Eazay Rogers, became one of 21 people who died in a crowd crush in the E2 nightclub 20 years ago.
What Cox, now 23 years old, does remember is that her mother was a family-oriented person with a loving soul, particularly encapsulated by one memory: the time she got chewing gum stuck in her hair and Rogers tried to get it out with peanut butter.
But growing up without her mother hasn’t been easy, said Cox, who recently graduated from Western Michigan University. “All the accomplishments that I’ve had, I couldn’t really celebrate that with my mom,” she told the Tribune. “So it’s just been difficult. Even with personal stuff — you want to talk to your mom, but I can’t because I don’t have that.”
At least 36 children like Cox lost a parent that cold February night during the worst nightclub catastrophe in Chicago history.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 17, 2003, a security guard deployed pepper spray to break up a fight inside the second-floor E2 nightclub, which sent patrons in a panicked rush toward the front stairwell. As people fell facedown on the stairs, more patrons climbed and fell atop them. Some were fatally crushed or asphyxiated, and 50 others were injured. Witnesses said the stack of bodies reached nearly 6 feet high.
Before chaos erupted at 2:25 a.m., over 1,100 people had crowded inside the South Loop nightclub, which was only capable of holding 240 individuals. Authorities later determined there weren’t enough exits for the size of the crowd. But there was also no record that the city had issued an occupancy placard for the establishment.
Like fellow patrons, Rogers was looking for a night of fun and a break from a busy life when their lives were cut short. The 21-year-old mother of two was getting ready to go to nursing school.
“She just went out one night, just to have a good time, and it cost her her life,” Rogers’ younger sister Angel Rogers, now 39, told the Tribune. “When she passed away, a part of me passed away, too.”
Ever since the 2003 tragedy, survivors, victims and their families have grappled with countless questions, seen little to no accountability and wondered if the fatalities could have been prevented.
The last few years have seen tragic history repeat itself across the country and the world. On Nov. 5, 2021, 10 people died and scores of people were injured in a crowd surge during a Travis Scott performance at the Astroworld Festival in Houston. On Oct. 30, 2022, a Halloween party crowd surged into a narrow alley in a nightlife district in Seoul, South Korea, killing 153 people and injuring countless others.
In Chicago, prosecutors were unable to make charges of involuntary manslaughter stick against the owners of E2, Calvin Hollins Jr. and Dwain Kyles. Hollins, his son Calvin Hollins III and party promoter Marco Flores were acquitted in 2007 of involuntary manslaughter charges when a judge ruled that the city failed to prove the men had acted recklessly. Prosecutors dropped the charge against Kyles shortly after.
Hollins Jr. and Kyles were instead convicted of criminal contempt for violating a judge’s July 2002 order to close the second-floor nightclub for building code violations in the months before disaster struck. In 2015, the co-owners made a deal with city attorneys that allowed them to avoid prison time and they instead were sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to serve 500 hours of community service.
“We felt like the city was responsible for their deaths, but the city tried to just throw it off and blame it on the nightclub owners,” Angel Rogers said. “The city was at fault too, because the city knew that this place was supposed to be closed.”
‘If I don’t make it, tell my mom I love her’
Amishoov Blackwell, 50, of Portage, Indiana, and three friends — two men and a woman — had originally planned to go to a reggae club in Wrigleyville called the Wild Hare, Blackwell recalled to the Tribune on Wednesday. But E2, which was formerly known as the Clique, hadn’t been open that long and sounded fun, too. So off they went on that bitterly cold evening.
“It was just a night out, that’s the craziest part,” Blackwell said.
While Blackwell and one of his friends waited to check his black mink coat, they began getting “bombarded” by frantic crowds hurrying from the dance floor and stumbling down the stairs, coughing and crying. The situation escalated in an instant, he said, when Blackwell and his friend turned around and headed for the stairs. Halfway through, everyone became so closely packed, no one could move.
“I felt people grabbing on my legs like, ‘Please, help me up!’ But I couldn’t move,” Blackwell said. A man next to him could not breathe. “I told him: ‘You’re going to be all right.’ I said: ‘Just hold my hand — we’re gonna get out of here.’ He squeezed my hand really, really tight.”
The man then told Blackwell: “If I don’t make it, tell my mom I love her.” Blackwell felt the pressure releasing on his hand. “He just let go. That’s when I got scared,” he said, adding he never found out the man’s name but knew he had died.
When firefighters pulled Blackwell to safety, he saw the carnage firsthand. “They walked us back through the dance floor. It was like a triage. Bodies were laying everywhere.” As people knelt near their loved ones, he could hear them say: “Please, please wake up.” Others were covered with white sheets.
Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford was working for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications that day and was in charge of putting together a timeline, with 911 calls and radio traffic.
The public wanted to know what happened, and controversies swirled, Langford said.
“Part of the issue was over the size of the stairway that led back to the door,“ Langford recalled. The stairwell was not wide enough, according to the city’s Department of Buildings.
“For that number of people occupying it, it was not right,” Langford said. “The stairs weren’t wide enough. People fell and started falling on top of the people that fell. It just built up.”
After the tragedy, the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked whether emergency personnel, knowing that young Black people patronized E2, arrived “in riot mode or rescue mode.” That notion stuck: U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, who was a character witness for Kyles, would later say that, “Rather than calling for rescue personnel, the city called for riot personnel. Something’s wrong with that.”
The victims’ families were unsuccessful in their attempts to sue the city for what they said was a botched rescue effort and a failure to enforce building code violations. An appellate court ruled in 2008 that the city was immune from liability.
Paul Wertheimer, principal and founder of Crowd Management Strategies — a Los Angeles-based crowd safety consulting service — lived and worked in Chicago until 2005, and was retained as an expert by one of the victims’ attorneys in a lawsuit against the city.
“Why was there no emergency plan? Why was the city allowing this club to be in business when it was supposed to be closed, or arguably closed? That was a big contention,” Wertheimer told the Tribune on Thursday. “(It was) a totally preventable disaster. The clubgoers were the victims, they weren’t the cause of the tragedy.”
‘The last words we said to each other’
On Feb. 17, 2003, Mary Carwell was babysitting her granddaughter Laneisha for her 23-year-old daughter, Demetrica. The toddler was having a hard time with her mother gone. Carwell called Demetrica, who promised an inconsolable Laneisha she’d bring back some ice cream and candy.
“She was telling her she loved her,’’ Carwell told the Tribune. Demetrica then had to go because the friend group she was with had finally made it inside E2 after waiting in a long line. “I told her to be careful and I love her, and that was the last words we said to each other.”
A few hours later, Carwell heard the news about the club, and after calling her daughter several times with no answer, she and a friend drove to hospitals to try and find her. After running into the Rev. Jackson at Mercy Hospital, they went with him to another location, where detectives, nurses and a priest talked with Carwell.
Once she learned her daughter was dead, she said, “I started crying … knocking stuff off the desk — they had to hold me down.”
About a week after the tragedy, as Carwell, her granddaughter and her sister drove to Demetrica’s funeral, they almost got into a crash on the icy, slippery roads.
“Another car almost slid into us,” Carwell said. As she glanced over at Laneisha, who was in a car seat, the toddler said: “Grandma, Grandma, she’s watching over us! I see my momma! She has those two things on her back!”
Carwell explained the toddler meant wings.
“Me and my sister started sobbing. People just don’t know how hard it is,” she said.
An attorney who represented many victims and their families, Melvin Brooks said it’s difficult to know how much progress has been made in Chicago in terms of crowd management and safety, if any.
“It’s hard to know where we stand today in terms of how diligent the city is,” he said. “One would hope — after having had a circumstance where 21 individuals died as a result of their failure to actually enforce the rules and the law — that they’re doing a better job. It’s just hard to say one way or the other.”
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Wertheimer said, the city’s response was lacking as it failed to take the necessary long-term steps through legislation to prevent a recurrence.
“Yeah, they took action against pepper spray being used inside,” Wertheimer said. “But the issue of crowd safety and crowd management was ignored, and (the issue of) proper training was ignored.”
Most people are not trained or prepared to deal with a stampede or crowd crush, Wertheimer said. There are ways that individuals can look out for their safety — such as checking for all nearby exits and calling authorities such as fire officials when a locale is overcrowded, he said. But the ultimate responsibility, he added, lies with event organizers and the city.
“There are certain things you could do, but the main responsibility of making events safe belong to the people who run the events and approve them,” he said. “Just like Astroworld — what are you gonna do in a crowd of 10,000? What can you do? Not a lot. You can do certain things, but your safety is beyond your control. So, the city of Chicago failed Chicagoans and the club owners failed Chicagoans.”
Brooks reflected on the tragedy after years of litigation on behalf of victims and their families. Most wrongful death and personal injury cases related to the tragedy were eventually settled with the club owners and Clear Channel Communications, the company that employed the disc jockey who worked the party at E2.
“It’s been 20 years. From my perspective, I’ve had a chance to actually watch some of the children of the deceased grow up and become productive,” he said. “And (I) know that we cannot bring their parents back.”
“I will say that, to some extent, we were able to at least address some issues such that I don’t think you’ll ever find a circumstance where security guards or any other folks will be permitted to disperse pepper spray in environments such as that,” he continued. “I think the city, at least after E2, was put on notice that they needed to do a much better job in terms of code enforcement.”
Feb. 17, 2023 Battalion Chief Derek Hullender said the building built in 1869 was untenable.
By David Aaro, John Spink Source The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS) Distributed byTribune Content Agency, LLC.
A fire caused significant damage to a nearly 155-year-old historic building in southwest Atlanta on Thursday morning, officials said.
Crews with Atlanta fire responded around 7:15 a.m. to a reported structure fire at the former Morris Brown College dormitory in the 600 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, according to Battalion Chief Derek Hullender. No injuries were reported.
The building, formerly called Gaines Hall, was designed by architect William Parkins and built in 1869, four years after the Civil War, according to the Atlanta Preservation Center. The brick structure is located within the Atlanta University Center Historic District and was Atlanta University’s first building. It later became a dormitory for Morris Brown and was returned to Clark Atlanta University after a 2017 court ruling.
A two-alarm fire previously caused damage to the building in 2015. At the time, fire investigators said the structure needed to be demolished due to the damage that left it unstable. On Thursday, conditions of the building forced fire crews to set up a defensive operation, Hullender said.
“Just concerns with building collapse,” he added. “The structure was untenable and we could not enter.”
Hullender said initially the fire appeared to be contained to one floor, but because firefighters weren’t able to make an interior attack, it was able to spread.
“It did extend to all three floors and there was collapse,” he said. “There were some additional roof collapse and partial wall collapses.”
He said three fire engines and three trucks responded to the blaze. Two additional engines were later added for “water supply.”
“Hydrants were fine, we just relay pumped because we were a little bit uphill and the length of the lay,” Hullender noted.
Hullender said the building would likely not be used going forward after the fire.
“Probably at this point they’re not going to be able to do anything else with it,” he added. “But that’ll be up for Clark Atlanta to determine.”
Feb. 16—LYNN — After a roughly three and a half hour battle, firefighters knocked down a two-alarm fire at 56 Sachem St. Thursday afternoon.
Police and firefighters blocked off three blocks of Sachem Street around noon as five fire engines and trucks rushed to extinguish the fire in the six-unit condominium building.
At 11:43 a.m., Lynn Fire responded to reports of smoke detectors going off at the building, District Fire Chief Joseph Zukas said.
Smoke flowed through the three-story complex’s roof at 12:02 p.m. as approximately seven firefighters stood on the roof of the complex with axes, attempting to vent the building.
As of 12:30 p.m., flames extended through the right side of the building. Firefighters broke the windows on the building’s third floor, continuing their efforts to vent it.
By 12:52 p.m., flames spread to the building’s front right corner. Around this time firefighters evacuated the building as it became too dangerous to fight the fire from inside with the roof beginning to collapse entirely, leaving the job to exterior operations only, Zukas said.
Lynn Fire Chief Daniel Sullivan said that while there are believed to have been four individuals in the apartment at the time the fire started, all of them had evacuated.
“I believe there were four home at the time,” Sullivan said. “I don’t know if they got out because of us, or if they all self-evacuated. I believe they self-evacuated.”
Sullivan added that he did not, as of 1:25 p.m., know where the fire started, though firefighters initially saw fire in the attic space upon arrival.
“When they got here, they found fire up in the attic space, but I don’t know where it started,” he said. “We’re still early in our investigation.”
The fire was difficult to put out, Sullivan noted, because it had gone underneath the roof, and the roofing material kept water from reaching the fire.
Second-story resident Michael Cordy, whose cat was rescued from the building, said that he was leaving to go to work when he heard the alarms. He said he thought it was a false alarm and took his time leaving, before he saw smoke from the back of the building.
“I was leaving for work and, every so often, the alarm goes off in this building,” Cordy said. “Usually firefighters come and shut it off — I thought it was going to be another routine thing. I actually stayed a minute just to open the door for them [firefighters]. They asked me to open the back door and then that’s where the smoke was.”
Along with Cordy’s cat, two birds belonging to another resident were also rescued. No injuries to residents or first responders were reported.
The Daily Item will provide updates as details arise.
Feb. 16—WATERTOWN — The parents of Watertown firefighter Peyton L.S. Morse have filed a lawsuit against the state over the 2021 death of their son.
The 21-year-old Watertown firefighter had a medical emergency on March 3, 2021, at the New York State Academy of Fire Science in Montour Falls, near Watkins Glen. He died nine days later in a Pennsylvania hospital.
Their attorney, Thomas J. DiNovo, an attorney with the Albany law firm of O’Connell & Aronowitz, filed court papers in the state Court of Claims on Jan. 24, alleging that Peyton suffered “severe and excruciating conscious pain and suffering” before he died as a result of his training at the fire academy.
The lawsuit only names the state of New York as the defendant, saying that it “negligently and carelessly” failed to provide safe training and failed to realize what was happening to him during the training exercise.
The lawsuit doesn’t set a specified amount of money, although his parents have always said that they are seeking justice for their son.
According to the lawsuit, Mr. and Mrs. Morse “have suffered substantial pecuniary loss and other damages” and are seeking “a substantial amount of money” from the state in damages.
Their son’s emergency happened after he complained that he could not breathe while he was going through a plywood tunnel — called the “box” — that simulates what a firefighter could experience during a fire. On that day, he used six air cylinders of his breathing apparatus before having the medical emergency.
They believe that instructors were negligent and could have prevented their son’s death. According to the suit, instructors waited too long to come to Peyton’s aid after he called for help, indicating that he could not breathe while inside a training apparatus, a plywood box that simulated what it’s like to be in a fire.
The court papers spell out how the Morses blame the state, its Division of Homeland Security, Office of Fire Prevention and Control and at least four instructors for Peyton’s death.
The court papers identify the four instructors as Warren T. Ward, Christopher Rea, Bruce E. Heberer and Scott P. Deninno who were there when Peyton suffered the medical emergency.
According to the lawsuit, the state failed to “provide reasonably safe equipment for recruits” and had “a duty to provide training that did not involve unreasonable risk of injury or death.”
When he had the medical emergency, the state failed to get him immediate medical care, medical personnel at the fire academy, provide adequate and necessary medical equipment and instruct academy personnel in emergency life saving training.
An ambulance was not at the fire academy at the time of the medical emergency.
The city also plans to file a lawsuit against the state in the firefighter’s death.
The state Attorney General will represent the state in the lawsuit.
Some of the turnout gear has diesel fuel as well as a solvent of unknown nature that was stored in the facility.
“We’re very appreciative to get the fire departments back in operation,” said Josh Humphrey, Iowa County Emergency Management Agency coordinator. He added that relying on older gear is dangerous.
The petroleum-based solvent left a tar-like coating on firefighters’ clothing that professional cleaning did not remove, Mark Swift, treasurer of the Marengo Fire Department, said in December.
The explosion injured a dozen employees, caused an evacuation of nearby houses and polluted soil and water because of chemicals stored at the site, where C6-Zero was attempting to dissolve used shingles into oil, sand and fiberglass.
Officials said in a letter to company officials that state law holds those “having control over a hazardous substance” liable to the state or other government body for “reasonable cleanup costs.”
A trip and a fall may have ruined dinner for a South Carolina family recently, but it was life-changing for everyone involved.
Barbara Gillespie, 72, lost her balance as she stepped onto the porch with the pasta and salad, flinging them and sending her into a chair. And, the mishap was caught on a security camera, according to Newsweek.
The Dominos delivery person picked the perfect porch to fall on as the residents were Lacey Klein, an EMT and her husband, Kevin Keighron, a firefighter/medic with Central Berkeley Fire and EMS in Summerville, SC.
Kevin said when he opened the door, she was still on the porch floor. He kept asking if she was OK and if she was hurt.
“I ruined your food,” she replied.
Later, she would jokingly explain to a reporter: “I fell on their pasta.”
The couple was more concerned about her than their dinner. They came up with a plan to help after hearing she was working at Dominos for the past five years because she needs the money.
Klein uploaded footage of the incident to TikTok and set up the GoFundMe minutes later, hoping to get some money for her.
“I thought, even if only a couple people donate, maybe she could take a couple days off to recover and relax,” she said adding that she never imagined the response it would get.
To date, people have donated more than $250,000. And, Barbara has turned in her apron.
“It’s nice to know that there are people in this world who care,” she said.
While she may have dropped their dinner, she’s gained a new family. The couple’s five children now fondly call her ‘Grandma Barbara.’
