STILL FIGHTIING FIRES AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
How much water has flowed under the bridge since 1938? Well, for starters, the bridge itself - in this case, the Verrazano-Narrows - wasn't even built yet. We had no PCs, no CDs, no LPs, not even TVs in 1938. Manhattan's shore ended at West Street, which bristled with steamboats and their docks. Hundreds of daily arrivals brought people and cars and horse-drawn wagons across the North River, from the Garden State and the terminals of powerful railroads. Containerization, like cartridgization and cassetization, were yet to be thought of, and so were containerports. So was the strip of the Kill known as gasoline alley, and events it would sponsor - the Exxon/Mobil blast a year and a half ago…
News: Barge/Refinery Explosion Shakes Staten Island, NY
The maritime industry makes local headlines when something goes wrong, but the headlines on February 21 went national. In a spectucular eruption of flame and smoke, the like of which New York had not seen since 9/11, an estimated million gallons of gasoline erupted from a barge near the southwestern tip of Staten Island. The barge captain and mate were killed in the 10 A.M. explosion, and a nearby worker at the ExxonMobil facility suffered third-degree burns. The New York Times the next day showed a plume of dense black smoke over the city, but reported that the calamaty had been quickly controlled. Almost certaiinly it was not the work of terrorists and, being a gasoline fire, The Times reassured, it could burn itself out without leaving a slick to endanger the birds.
NYFD Marine Division Answers the Call
Just after 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning in July the call came that a car had rolled off Randall's Island into the East River. Chief Bill Siegel, at his desk at Marine Division Headquarters in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, paused for just an instant then jumped up, grabbed a life jacket and headed for the stairs. Other firefighters were already on their way to the pier where the Kevin C. Kane, was tied up waiting to go. Within four minutes the 52-ft. boat was underway with its five-person crew racing upriver toward the sinking car. The men moved swiftly, yet calmly to set the stern deck pipe to pump water in an effort to gain an extra knot or two of speed. Seventy years ago, fireboats ruled New York Harbor. Much has changed since the first half of the 20th century when the more than 430 sq.
