Commentary &Photos 11 Apr 2009 07:56 am
Fire!
- How tenuous everything is.
On Thursday a pitcher for the LAAngels was killed in a hit & run accident.
That night the same thing happened to a non-celebrated woman in Brooklyn.
You never know what you’re going to face when you get out of bed.
When you’re a kid, there’s a strong compulsion to chase after the speeding fire truck, with the loud sirens, the speed, the unique look of the hook & ladder.
When you get older, the fire trucks are just as compelling. However, I think the reason is for the tragedy playing out at the end of their mission.
Walking up Bleecker Street yesterday, early morning, you could see the flashing sirens, the multiple trucks and ambulances, the whirring lights. As I got closer to the scene it was obviously a fire in progress and a lot . . . I mean a lot of fire trucks and firemen.
I walked by on the other side of the street and took a rash of photos. It makes for a good Saturday post, so here are those pics.
From about half a block away, the buildup of fire trucks was overwhelming.
You could see a ladder going up to a building’s roof and
the lightest wisp of gray smoke coming out the top.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
Trucks even filled the neighboring cross streets for two full blocks.
There were a lot of firemen at work here.
The fire hydrant issuing water was a full city block away
from the building on fire.
As I got closer, the numbers of firemen increased.
They milled about and watched intently.
Some carried objects back to the trucks.
Two ladders shot up on separate streets to the corner building.
A quiet business continued as I moved past.
I got the sense that all was in order as many of the
fire workers went to their vehicles.
I left to go to work.
Hopefully no one was hurt or actually lost anything in the fire.
on 11 Apr 2009 at 12:51 pm 1.John said …
As a kid, I remember the 1966 fire across the street from the Flatiron Building on Broadway (now the site of the the dull-looking apartment building across from Madison Square Park). The site was home to bunch of non-descript buildings, probably about the same ages as the ones in your pictures fire pictures, but something went wrong and 12 firemen died, which until 9/11 was the worst loss of life in the history of the NYFD.
On the Nick Adenhart death, Mike Lupica had a good column on Friday in the Daily News noting that the DWI by Joba Chamberlain over the winter in Nebraska takes on a whole new meaning after Thursday, where before the talk was more about him dissing Yogi Berra and how Yankee fans would handle that than Joba tooling around with an open liquor bottle in the front seat. Sometimes there’s very little that separates the routine from the tragic.
on 11 Apr 2009 at 12:53 pm 2.Bridget Thorne said …
Nice shots. When in doubt, call NY’s finest!