ANOTHER PHONE COMPANY FIRE. 2-20-87.

[68jk09]

Not to do a "can you top this" on phone company Fires however i would like to relate a story about another Telephone Company Fire ....We had a Multiple at BKLYN Box 827.. 0330 hrs on 2-20-87 in a BKLYN Telephone Switching Center at 1070 Bushwick Ave bet Palmetto St & Gates Ave a FP 4 sty 80 x 180 ( with a traditional tightly closed convoluted phone company layout)..... it was not of the magnitude or duration of the 1975 one but it was also serious . ...i responded with R*2 & we were ordered to conduct a search along with 112 & 124 to locate the seat of the Fire...heavy toxic smelling smoke was coming right out the front door onto the sidewalk ...you had to mask up in the street & deploy a search rope ...ventilation was very limited (& non existent in some areas ) with only keyed access panels on the upper floors on the exp 2 side & wire glass windows covered with louvers on the exp 4 side .....the main Fire area was in a large windowless enclosed area with no ventilation containing large floor to cieling frame racks packed with burning plastic covered wires & banks of batteries it was located on the exp 2 side of the first floor towards the front ....to access it you had to go quite aways back through the hallway ( distance travelled to get to the starting point there measured afterwards was about 125 ft) then go left & sort of double back in another hallway going back towards the front ...when we got to the portal (not really a doorway) entering the main Fire area it was somewhat free burning but not venting anywhere other than over our heads towards the rear (but venting where originally ? = thru out the interior of the bldg & socked down inside ) .....luckily it was a very high cieling in the Fire area later determined to be 19 ft high (convoluted type of bldg) so the heat was bad but not "that bad " at floor level as if it had been a lower ceiling but a constant shower of hot spalling plaster was falling & melting plastic was dripping on us in near blackout conditions ...i remember looking up & seeing (at times) the flames that were sometimes visible as they rolled overhead out of the smoke were several different colors (maybe green/blue ?) not the normal red / orange & there were wooden ladders attached to a horizontal rail at the upper level with rollers on the top & bottom of the ladders to roll them back & forth sideways to work on the equipment (like in a library to access books on high shelves )....some of the ladders had already collapsed as the upper portions attached to the higher rollers had burned away & the remaining lower rung section was blocking the aisles ... one of the ladders as we were advancing fell over & struck me in the back (more of a quick scare than an injury HA)....ENG*222 had the first Line & commenced to hit the Fire.....it was not going out easily & the smoke/steam condition along with the limited ventilation made for a lengthy operation & at some point we had to go outside to change bottles....in R*2 back then we still had both old & new Scott Masks .....i usually preferred & used the old Scott with a Wilson Face Piece however the old steel cylinders were only good for 20 to 30 minutes & anticipating the inside distance & anticipated duration i took a newer Scott 4.5 (which could also be changed & outfitted with a 1 hr bottle)..... after the initial entry & search & accessing the Fire area when it was time to go outside to change to a 1 hr bottle i did not take into consideration that the wet "fabric" 4.5 straps would freeze somewhat right away in the frigid February air that night .....my usual old Wilson Face Piece had rubber straps & never had froze or got to the point of not being able to get a good seal (even if one of the old rubber tabs broke there were several more straps than the newer 4.5 fabric straps).......going back in i could not pull the frozen 4.5 straps tight enough so i had to press the face piece to my face to get a seal (yes normal smoke may not have caught my attention back then but it was a phone company ? ) with the same hand holding my Halligan Tool & using my other hand to run along the search rope ( & bumping into other Members going out) ....i was silently cursing the newer 4.5 straps for encumbering me ....by the time i made it back to the Fire area the straps thawed enough to allow me to tighten them up & get a free handed seal.... after traversing the route in & out more than once to change bottles we realized that the unvented forward part of the Fire area was almost at the exp 1 wall so we breached a hole somewhat in from the lobby that allowed a 2nd Line to be advanced to augment the original Line in the forward part for the large original Fire area for final extinguishment (saving a long trek to the back & then forward again) ...... afterwards we noticed that the Brass rivets & the small loop on the rear brim of our Leather Helmets had turned white.....after returning to Qtrs CPT Ray D. noticed his large R*2 Metal Belt Buckle had discolored....when i changed my wet clothes after returning to Qtrs i saw that coins that had been in my back pocket had discolered (no Bunker Pants back then ...unkown if they would have prevented that or what it meant ? ) .... as in the 1975 Telephone Company Fire our Medical Folders from the Bushwick Telephone Fire were marked on the front concerning the Fire ... i never knew that until i was being Retired & actually saw my folder.. .
The Seven R*2 BROTHERS working that night 2-20-87 .... were CPT Ray D. .....FF Terry H. ..FF Pete M. .. FF Lee I. .....FF Al S. .... FF Mike P. .... & myself ........On 9-11 we lost CPT Ray D. then Rescue Ops Chief .. FF Terry H. then CPT R*1 ...& FF Pete M. then LT R*2 (so who knows what may have happened to them today sickness wise ? ) CONTINUED REST IN PEACE BROTHERS.

 

[68jk09]

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/20/nyregion/in-brooklyn-life-without-telephones.html ........For Alfred Rodriguez, having a phone could mean getting a job. For Miriam Maldanado, it is the difference between fear and a sense of security. And for the Victoria Insurance Agency, it is vital for business.

All were among the 41,000 customers in the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick sections of Brooklyn whose phones were still affected yesterday by a fire Wednesday morning in a New York Telephone Company switching station in Bushwick.

The company said yesterday that it was still assessing the damage and had no idea when service would be fully restored.

The fire, which broke out in the equipment room on the first floor of the four-story brick switching station at 1070 Bushwick Avenue, near Gates Avenue, damaged two switching machines that handle some 480,000 local calls daily, company officials said. It also destroyed two other switching machines that route 450,000 calls daily in and out of the 718 area code.

Overall, service to five Brooklyn telephone exchanges - 452, 453, 455, 574 and 443 - have been affected. Some customers have lost all service; others said they could call only outside Brooklyn or receive calls from some areas.

Some emergency services were instituted Wednesday by New York Telephone. Yesterday emergency aid was available in the form of phone banks at nine street corners, four mobile phone vans and emergency lines to two police station houses and six hospitals.

Despite such efforts, many Brooklyn residents yesterday were struggling in their first full day without a telephone.

''I went on a job interview and they can't get back to me!'' said Mr. Rodriguez, who has been unemployed for two months and was waiting dejectedly by the eight-phone New York Telephone emergency trailer at Bleecker Street and Knickerbocker Avenue. 'Seems Like 1887'

''It doesn't seem like 1987,'' said 30-year-old Michael Alvarado, patiently redialing a number at the same spot. ''It seems like 1887.'' For businesses, the prospect of no calls also meant no profits.


At Rocky's 83rd Pizza on Knickerbocker Avenue, the loss of 50 to 60 daily calls for takeout orders could hurt business, said John Gennaro, minding the cash register.

''It's like being cut off from the world,'' said Jaquie Belizario, owner of the Victoria Insurance Agency at 307 Malcolm X Boulevard. Ms. Belizario, who says her phone normally rings ''all day long,'' had received two calls yesterday, both from outside Brooklyn.

Hospitals and police station houses without phone service largely reported that they were able to function with cellular phones and emergency lines.

But the 83d Precinct station house at 480 Knickerbocker Avenue decided that the situation warranted increasing its police patrol on the streets.

''The problem is the community can't phone us,'' said Capt. James Courtney.

The extra police presence, he said, so far had slightly lowered the local crime rate.

New York Telephone officials expressed hope that additional emergency phones would be in service tomorrow borrowed from regional phone companies including New England Telephone.

But the prospect of using mobile phone service for days or even weeks did not please Brooklyn residents lined up in the cold for a phone.

''It would be disastrous,'' said a city employee, Morris Singleton. But he added that he had survived worse -subway strikes and snowstorms, for example. ''I'm a New Yorker,'' Mr. Singleton said. ''I'll survive.''
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 20, 1987, Section B, Page 3 of the National edition with the headline: IN BROOKLYN, LIFE WITHOUT TELEPHONES. Order Reprints | Today?s Paper | Subscribe

 

[68jk09]

Palmetto St & Bushwick Ave · Brooklyn, New York 11221, USA

Kreuzung

www.google.com

 

[68jk09]

After the Fire as we were in the street taking up the then BKLYN Boro Commander Chief Toohey was at the Command Post in an apparent heated argument with a big PD Boss... he was demanding the Material Safety Data Sheets that the Phone Company Officials had provided the only copy to the PD ?.... he eventually got the info.

 

[nfd2004]

I remember reading about this Telephone Company fire, and the story WNYF had on the earlier Telephone Company fire.

As a firefighter outside of New York City, most of us never gave any serious thought to a fire in such a building. It wasn't the routine fire in a building that most firefighters would be faced with. In fact the firehouse where I worked, about two blocks away was a very similar type of Phone Company Building, as Chief JK describes here.

Most of us had never been inside there to see how the place was set up. So we got in touch with the people over there, told them that as firefighters we would like to check the place out based on what happened in NYC.

Those phone company personnel were fully aware of the NYC incidents and they invited us over to see for ourselves, just how we would handle it should a similar incident occur.

We found that the phone cables were in a basement level on racks from floor to ceiling level.

We also learned that there is High Voltage running through that area and should we come in contact with that, "we wouldn't be around to tell about it"

If it was necessary to cut off power, everyone in the city and many surrounding towns would lose all of their phone service. This was before the days of cell phones.

Just like in NYC we also found that there were no areas to vent the smoke.

And what if somebody was trapped down there, how would we get them out. 

What happen back in NYC with their Phone Company Fires, some 30 plus years ago, was probably a wake up call for many other fire depts. as well. I know it was were my brother was in Bridgeport, Ct too.

At the time it was the kind of thing that most fire departments did not even think about.

 

[DaveReinstein]

Not to do a "can you top this" on phone company Fires however i would like to relate a story about another Telephone Company Fire ....We had a Multiple at BKLYN Box 827.. 0330 hrs on 2-20-87 in a BKLYN Telephone Switching Center at 1070 Bushwick Ave bet Palmetto St & Gates Ave a FP 4 sty 80 x 180 ( with a traditional tightly closed convoluted phone company layout)..... it was not of the magnitude or duration of the 1975 one but it was also serious . ...i responded with R*2 & we were ordered to conduct a search along with 112 & 124 to locate the seat of the Fire...heavy toxic smelling smoke was coming right out the front door onto the sidewalk ...you had to mask up in the street & deploy a search rope ...ventilation was very limited (& non existent in some areas ) with only keyed access panels on the upper floors on the exp 2 side & wire glass windows covered with louvers on the exp 4 side .....the main Fire area was in a large windowless enclosed area with no ventilation containing large floor to cieling frame racks packed with burning plastic covered wires & banks of batteries it was located on the exp 2 side of the first floor towards the front ....to access it you had to go quite aways back through the hallway ( distance travelled to get to the starting point there measured afterwards was about 125 ft) then go left & sort of double back in another hallway going back towards the front ...when we got to the portal (not really a doorway) entering the main Fire area it was somewhat free burning but not venting anywhere other than over our heads towards the rear (but venting where originally ? = thru out the interior of the bldg & socked down inside ) .....luckily it was a very high cieling in the Fire area later determined to be 19 ft high (convoluted type of bldg) so the heat was bad but not "that bad " at floor level as if it had been a lower ceiling but a constant shower of hot spalling plaster was falling & melting plastic was dripping on us in near blackout conditions ...i remember looking up & seeing (at times) the flames that were sometimes visible as they rolled overhead out of the smoke were several different colors (maybe green/blue ?) not the normal red / orange & there were wooden ladders attached to a horizontal rail at the upper level with rollers on the top & bottom of the ladders to roll them back & forth sideways to work on the equipment (like in a library to access books on high shelves )....some of the ladders had already collapsed as the upper portions attached to the higher rollers had burned away & the remaining lower rung section was blocking the aisles ... one of the ladders as we were advancing fell over & struck me in the back (more of a quick scare than an injury HA)....ENG*222 had the first Line & commenced to hit the Fire.....it was not going out easily & the smoke/steam condition along with the limited ventilation made for a lengthy operation & at some point we had to go outside to change bottles....in R*2 back then we still had both old & new Scott Masks .....i usually preferred & used the old Scott with a Wilson Face Piece however the old steel cylinders were only good for 20 to 30 minutes & anticipating the inside distance & anticipated duration i took a newer Scott 4.5 (which could also be changed & outfitted with a 1 hr bottle)..... after the initial entry & search & accessing the Fire area when it was time to go outside to change to a 1 hr bottle i did not take into consideration that the wet "fabric" 4.5 straps would freeze somewhat right away in the frigid February air that night .....my usual old Wilson Face Piece had rubber straps & never had froze or got to the point of not being able to get a good seal (even if one of the old rubber tabs broke there were several more straps than the newer 4.5 fabric straps).......going back in i could not pull the frozen 4.5 straps tight enough so i had to press the face piece to my face to get a seal (yes normal smoke may not have caught my attention back then but it was a phone company ? ) with the same hand holding my Halligan Tool & using my other hand to run along the search rope ( & bumping into other Members going out) ....i was silently cursing the newer 4.5 straps for encumbering me ....by the time i made it back to the Fire area the straps thawed enough to allow me to tighten them up & get a free handed seal.... after traversing the route in & out more than once to change bottles we realized that the unvented forward part of the Fire area was almost at the exp 1 wall so we breached a hole somewhat in from the lobby that allowed a 2nd Line to be advanced to augment the original Line in the forward part for the large original Fire area for final extinguishment (saving a long trek to the back & then forward again) ...... afterwards we noticed that the Brass rivets & the small loop on the rear brim of our Leather Helmets had turned white.....after returning to Qtrs CPT Ray D. noticed his large R*2 Metal Belt Buckle had discolored....when i changed my wet clothes after returning to Qtrs i saw that coins that had been in my back pocket had discolered (no Bunker Pants back then ...unkown if they would have prevented that or what it meant ? ) .... as in the 1975 Telephone Company Fire our Medical Folders from the Bushwick Telephone Fire were marked on the front concerning the Fire ... i never knew that until i was being Retired & actually saw my folder.. .
The Seven R*2 BROTHERS working that night 2-20-87 .... were CPT Ray D. .....FF Terry H. ..FF Pete M. .. FF Lee I. .....FF Al S. .... FF Mike P. .... & myself ........On 9-11 we lost CPT Ray D. then Rescue Ops Chief .. FF Terry H. then CPT R*1 ...& FF Pete M. then LT R*2 (so who knows what may have happened to them today sickness wise ? ) CONTINUED REST IN PEACE BROTHERS.

Mike Pena spoke briefly about this job on one of the podcasts he was on. Sounded very interesting, especially after your recollection of the fire