NYT: Blaze on Brooklyn Waterfront Levels Historic Warehouses

[DeepModem Mom]

Blaze on Brooklyn Waterfront Levels Historic Warehouses
By MICHAEL WILSON
Published: May 3, 2006


(Robert Stolarik for The New York Times)
The Greenpoint fire left the streets flooded and eerie. Officials said that 350 firefighters were called to the scene, the largest response other than 9/11 since Aug. 26, 1995, when the St. George Hotel burned in Brooklyn.

A fire roared through a network of abandoned, historic warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront yesterday with a speed and ferocity that challenged and exhausted hundreds of firefighters, and led fire marshals to suspect arson.

The blaze burned all day as it consumed a former rope factory on West Street near the site of the Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, which launched the ironclad warship Monitor for the Union 144 years ago. The fire blackened the sky above northern Brooklyn with thick smoke shot through at its base with bright flames a block deep. The plume could be seen for miles....

***

More than 350 firefighters from at least 70 units spent all day at the fire, those in front retreating to safety when entire walls crumbled and launched smoldering red bricks 100 feet down the narrow streets of the waterfront. At 10 alarms, it was called the city's largest fire in more than a decade, excepting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The speed of the blaze and the fact that it started just before dawn in abandoned buildings led investigators to suspect arson, said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. The buildings were owned by Joshua Guttman, of Lawrence, N.Y., a real estate developer with a history of buying commercial properties and turning them into condominiums....

***

The fire area is a belt of formerly industrial, historic waterfront properties that are turning, one block at a time, into condominiums and apartments, bringing the young and affluent to the neighborhood. Mr. Guttman had acquired demolition permits for 4 of his 10 sites in the area and filed preliminary requests for 6 more on Monday, said Jennifer Givner, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Buildings....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/nyregion/03fire.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[AngryAmish]

1. Greek Lightning?

[saigon68]

2. LOL

[Theres-a]

3. Opa!

[Scout1071]

7. Italian lightning is more likely.

I'm just sayin'. Abandoned warehouses in a steadily gentrified neighborhood? Waterfront property?

Hmmmmmm.

[BoneDaddy]

4. Find out who

plans on building there and I guarantee you will make some connection.

[DUHandle]

5. Sadly

I share and respect your suspcions.

[endarkenment]

6. bingo nt.

[0007]

10. Historic is the key work. junior does these historic scenes well,

so he may show up if there is any cronyism involved with his group of gangsters.

[henslee]

8. I know those buildings. They were cool. They were built like armories &

I remember seeing dates on them from 1865, I think, etched in stone.

[zann725]

9. Say "Eminent Domain"...???

n/t

[soleft]

11. In lower Manhattan I could smell the smoke in lobby of my bldg.

Uncomfortable reminder of 9/11. Fortunately no one's been hurt.