This past Tuesday in Brooklyn, a massive three-alarm fire sparked off in the evidence warehouse of the New York City Police Department.
Officially, the fire ignited at about 10:40 a.m. local time in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn at the Erie Basin Auto Pond, explained police officials. Over a dozen impounded vehicles were stored at the facility; an enormous amount of biological evidence from multiple decades of crimes was also stored at the facility. The massive fire, which resulted in injuries to a large number of first responders and civilians, was able to bee seen from all over New York City, as shown on social media via a number of posted photos.
“We attempted an interior fire attack, but [firefighters] were overwhelmed by the amount of fire and we had to back all of our firefighters out of the building and go to an exterior attack,” explained John Hodgens, the New York City Fire Chief, while speaking at a press conference in the wake of the fire finally being contained. “We have a third alarm assignment right now with about 150 fire and EMS personnel.”
As explained by Hodgens, members of the FDNY were forced to deploy a total of three fire boats in order to combat the blaze and were making use of drones to pinpoint the most effective way to utilize the boats. Firefighters were then forced to retreat from inside the burning building after the first response due to that type of building historically having a high collapse potential; an area of the building did end up collapsing a short while after they arrived on the scene. The large concentration of combustible material only resulted in making the building even more unsafe to be in.
In the fires, a total of eight people were injured: three firefighters, three Emergency Medical Services personnel, and two civilians. All of those injured reported only minor injuries, Hodgens stated.
Due to the fact that the fire baots were putting in most of the work from outside of the building, Hodgens stated that extinguishing the fire would end up taking a long time. Normally, warehouses such as these are sealed from the outside, resulting in firefighters needing to wait for the fire to cause openings in the building prior to being able to fight it.
“This fire is probably going to go on for a few days, by the time we’re able to fully extinguish it and get inside, possibly to get to the deep-seated areas,” he concluded.
