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Fireman Battle Three-Alarm Blaze In Mott Haven

NY1 News 7/2/09

A three-alarm fire ripped through a Bronx apartment building early this morning.

Fire officials say the fire broke out just after 4 a.m. on East 138th Street in Mott Haven.
Officials say the flames started in a kitchen on the third floor and the fire spread to the fourth, fifth and sixth floors.

It took more than 100 firefighters two hours to bring the flames under control.

"It was a very tough fire," said FDNY Deputy Chief Raymond Stanton. "The building has undergone renovation and there were false ceilings and many boards that had to be open to expose the fire.">>>

FDNY Rescues Brooklyn Child's Head From Fence With Jaws Of Life

NY Daily News 7/2/09

Firefighters from Ladder 101 and Engine 202

bent metal fence bars to free Leon Stanley.

Firefighters receive state-of-the-art training to battle raging infernos, dangerous building collapses and even terrifying terrorist attacks.

But sometimes it's just as rewarding to rescue a 2-year-old Brooklyn boy who got his head wedged in a metal park fence.

"This is one of those things you don't see a lot, but you have to be ready for everything," chuckled Firefighter Michael Troiano.

Precocious toddler Leon Stanley's unexpected adventure began just after 11:30 a.m. when he and his father went for a walk near their Red Hook home.

Enjoying the sunshine, the pair strolled along Van Brunt St. toward Mother Cabrini Park. Stanley, 38, turned his head for a moment and suddenly heard his son cry out>>>

Grace Under Pressure

Rudy Giuliani's Trial By Fire

Success Magazine 7/2/09

It's 11 a.m. on a warm day in April and Rudy Giuliani is running late. Long after trading in his Gracie Mansion address, the meticulous, Brooklyn-born, street-kid-turned-crisis-management icon is in hot demand. His tightly managed schedule is calculated to the minute with marathon television appearances that began on this day at daybreak. The topic today: renaming the site of the 110-story twin towers destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Plans called for a 1,776-foot skyscraper, One World Trade Center. Instead of a building, Giuliani tells interviewers he prefers a memorial to mark this hallowed ground.

Giuliani—grandson of Italian immigrants, former prosecutor who brought down mobsters and white-collar criminals, former mayor credited with cleaning up the Big Apple—will be forever linked to the events of 9/11. We’ll forever remember the video images of him with ash-dusted head and shoulders and surgical mask in hand as he walked from the disaster site minutes after the first tower collapsed. Other city officials following him grimace and clasp coats to their faces to protect against the thick dust, but Giuliani keeps walking, speaking into the camera urging calm>>>

Supreme Court Refuses Case By Sept. 11 Victims' Families

NY Times 6/29/09

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal brought by families and insurers of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in an effort to link the Saudi royal family to the financing of Al Qaeda and terrorism.

The decision lets stand a lower court ruling that found Saudi Arabia and members of the royal family could not be sued in American court because of a 1976 law granting sovereign immunity to foreign countries.

The Obama administration angered some victims’ families last month by supporting the Saudis’ claim to immunity, citing among other factors the significant diplomatic implications raised by the case>>>

Staten Island Ferry Hard Landing Injures 15 At St. George Pier

NY Daily News 7/2/09

More than a dozen passengers were injured Wednesday night when a packed Staten Island ferry lost power as it was docking and smashed into a pier, officials said.

Panic quickly spread among the passengers of the 2,700-ton John J. Marchi ferry when the captain announced over loudspeakers that the ship had no power, witnesses said.

"He kept repeating, 'Passengers, hold on. Passengers, hold on,' " said rider Daniel Kusrow, 38.

"It was clear something was about to happen. The first impact was impressive. It popped open the security doors. It was like a car hitting a wall," said Kusrow, of St. George, S.I.>>>

Revelations And Overruns Still Haunt Deutsche Bldg.

The Tribeca Trib 7/1/09

Last month, accounts of more budget overruns, accusations of fraud and damning revelations of incompetence darkened the ongoing and much troubled story of the deconstruction of the former Deutsche Bank tower at 130 Liberty St. Now more than four years behind the schedule that officials set for it in 2004, the building, fatally damaged on 9/11, is set to come down next January.

MONTHS LATE, MILLIONS OVER BUDGET
Lower Manhattan Development Corp. officials announced on June 11 that they may need as much as $35 million more in public money to finish tearing down the building. The agency authorized sinking another $20 million into its contract with Bovis Lend Lease, the project’s general contractor, raising the total cost of the job to more than $173 million. Another $10-15 million will need to be authorized by the end of the summer.

Avi Schick, the agency’s executive director, said he was hoping to fund the increases with a complex combination of proceeds from insurance claims and federal grant money.

“Over the next several weeks, we’ll have to develop a strategy [for payment],” Schick said.

If that fails, the LMDC would need to request additional federal funding, a process that would take months to complete and could delay the building’s demolition even longer>>>

City Island Firehouse Stays Open Despite Budget's Plan For Shutdown

NY Daily News 7/2/09

Who says you can't fight City Hall?

Elated City Islanders are celebrating the reversal of a plan to shut down the island's only FDNY ladder company at night.

"For seven long months, it was City Island versus City Hall - and City Island won," said a jubilant City Councilman James Vacca.

City budget cutters had originally planned to shut down Ladder 53 from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m., leaving the isolated islanders dependent on mainland firehouses for rescue services at night.

City Island residents worried that response from the other firehouses would be much slower than that of the City Island firehouse at 169Schofield St.

Early last Sunday, a two-alarm fire proved them right>>>

Sentencing For Wife Of FDNY Marshal

Newsday 7/2/09

The widow of a New York City fire marshal faces prison for shooting him to death while he slept.
Forty-year-old Janet Redmond-Mercereau (mer-ser-OH') could face 25 years to life in prison when she is sentenced Thursday afternoon.
A Staten Island jury convicted her of second-degree murder on May 21.
Thirty-eight-year-old Douglas Mercereau was found in their home on Dec. 2, 2007. He had been shot three times in the head.

Redmond-Mercereau told investigators she never heard the gunshots. She said she was wearing earplugs and sleeping in another room with one of their children, who was sick.

Volunteers Needed For Sept. 11 Ceremony

The Villages Daily Sun 7/2/09

Those who sacrificed their lives to save others during the events of Sept. 11, 2001, will not be forgotten.
On Sept. 11, the FDNY 343 Memorial Club will celebrate the lives of those who died when airliners piloted by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and into a field in

Pennsylvania on the way to Washington>>>

Tuesday June 30, 2009

Three Die At Queens Sewage Plant From Toxic Fumes

NY Daily News 6/29/09

Three workers, including a Brooklyn father and his son, died Monday after apparently being overcome by poisonous gas while trying to unclog an 18-foot-deep cesspool at a Queens sewage plant, officials said.

Firefighters raced to Royal Waste Services Inc. on Douglas Ave. in Jamaica at 2:32 p.m., but the men were dead at the scene.

"They went in and got trapped in the sewer," said Abe Rosenthal, a friend of the victims. "This is unbelievable."

The men worked for the S. Dahan Sewer Specialists, which was hired by Royal Waste to unclog a drain at the bottom of the 18-foot-deep by 3-foot-wide drywell.

Police said one of the owners of the company, Shlomo Dahan, and his son, Harel, perished in the accident.

Harel Dahan, 23, lost his footing and fell into the cesspool while trying to unstop the drain with a long pipe plunger, cops said. The drain was apparently clogged by debris from recent rainstorms.

Shlomo Dahan, 49, climbed down the hole to rescue his son, but was overcome by toxic fumes, police said. When he failed to emerge or respond to cries of co-workers, Royal Waste employee Rene Francisco Rivas, 52, climbed down the hole and was overcome, too, cops said.

"It appears it was the high levels of hydrogen sulfide that overcame the victims," said FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief John Sudnik>>>