tommyguy

YFD was called to 20 and 22 Pier Street at 8:30 AM this morning (Tuesday). The fire started in a vacant two-story MD at 20 Pier Street in the Ludlow section and strong winds quickly spread the flames to the four-story OMD next door at 22 Pier Street. It went to 3-alarms before being knocked down. MA stood by at several Yonkers firehouses. (I heard two New Rochelle companies -- Eng 24 and Truck 11 -- responding to a wire down.) News 12 link

Great job guys. Fascinating to watch Truck 73 get in that driveway. Wow.

Even now it's still painful to look back at that horrible day. But we do need to remember and to never forget.

This isn't the greatest photo but it's definitely vintage. This is March 1931 and the streetcar in the photo is a Palisades Avenue No. 2 car that lost its brakes coming down Palisades Avenue from Ashburton (past where today the Schlobohm housing projects are located). The trolley should've turned left (in the photo) but was going too fast to stay on the track and careened into the buildings. One person, a woman, was killed. (Btw there's a typo on the photo caption. Should be New School Street.) It's hard to see but that looks like YFD Truck 7.

I know this has been mentioned before but it's odd the older engine is the one with the enclosed cab. And they're both Seagraves to boot!

Terrific that everybodygoes would write what he did. Very well stated! I knew a lot of White Plains firefighters and cops when I lived and worked in White Plains and the residents are VERY lucky. Most have no idea. As a citizen and a homeowner I can tell you this concerns me. I was told during one serious structure fire WPFD called in an additional ladder company on MA to set up an aerial attack on one of the exposure sides. However the company responding was a two-man company. Thus the IC had to use enginemen -- or request an additional engine company -- to help the ladder company set up. It created delay. I feel lucky, I really do, that I live in Yonkers. I was told by someone at YFD that their normal procedure is to dispatch four engines and two trucks on any job that sounds like it may be a working fire. He said they do this in order to have enough manpower present to mount an aggressive attack in the early stages of the fire. He said, "So far it seems to be working."

The IA shows Engine 65 and Truck 32 on the initial assignment. Normally Engine 70 would be first-due (Fire HQ-Station 6 -- where Truck 32 is also quartered -- is literally across the street from the YMCA) and I know Eng 70 was there. I don't know if they were OOS on the initial box. Normally Eng 65 would've been second-due.

A tough morning for WPFD and WPPD. A smoky arson fire at the downtown YMCA, over 100 residents to be evacuated at 0330 AM. A crime scene. Link

I was not aware of that. Of course Station 7 was locally famous as the firehouse that doesn't LOOK like a firehouse. I remember as a young kid my Dad or someone driving us out to Ridgeway to see it. That might've been just before Truck 3 was put in service. We pulled in on the apron for a minute although I don't remember if there was just a single engine there. Chief maybe you can answer a question I've had for a long time. How did Headquarters on Mam'k Avenue become Station 6 while Prescott Avenue (Old Mam'k Rd) was designated Station 1? It always seemed like HQ predated Station 1. I always wondered if originally HQ was just 'Headquarters,' and maybe later on was designated Station 6 as the next available number. In fact possibly someone at WPFD told me that as the guys back then were fairly tolerant of kids hanging around and I used to ask tons of questions. But after so many years....

Thanks for identifying the officer in the photo as Lt. DeSimone. I remember the name and hearing about him. He was very highly regarded as I recall. Does the ladder in the photo look like Truck 1 to you? I remember seeing the old ALF mid-mount at Station 7, I had a buddy named Victor Price who worked there back in the 1970s. I think he was assigned to Eng. 7 (71), though, not to the truck. He was working Eng 7 one night when there was a working fire at the Hillaire Riding stables. A fire-damaged wooden beam came down on him though luckily his Scott Air-Pak took the brunt of it. I wonder what type of ladder truck the ALF mid-mount replaced at Station 7. Would you happen to know?

The truck looks like Ladder 1 from Station 6. Great photos. Does anyone know who the instructor is?

It sounds to me like a non-story. The second-due engine was in service and I doubt very much it took them twenty minutes (as one of the tenants said) to get there once the alarm was transmitted. It sounds like there could've possibly been a delay in notifying the Fire Department. Actually if you look at the video I would say FDJC did a pretty good job. There was a lot of fire there on arrival and it looks like they knocked it down pretty quickly. The building where the fire started has a lot of damage only it's not like it burned to the ground or anything even close to that. I would say, Good job guys!

If I can go off-topic... This thread has brought back A LOT of memories. One is about the way White Plains began to change in the late 1960s and 1970s. Today it's almost unrecognizable compared to the White Plains I knew from about 1955-1966. When I was a youngster, in the early 1960s, we were always going 'downtown': to Macy's or Woolworth's or the Library, to the RKO or Loew's. That was a big deal to us then. In the mid-1960s I lived near Lake Street. The 'Valley.' Like many Lake Street kids I seldom left the neighborhood. Except to go to WPHS and that was way out on North Street. Then I started working full-time. I had a small apartment on Barker Avenue. I remember in late 1968 or early 1969, one morning I got up early, around 8:30 AM -- I was working nights -- and walked over to Main Street to get the morning papers at the White Swan Stationary store. And I hadn't been around that part of Main Street much for several years. I walked over to Hamilton Avenue and cut through Conway Drive by the new Sears parking deck. Back then Conway Drive didn't have a name. I don't think the parking deck was even completely finished. When I walked down Conway Drive and turned the corner onto Main what a shock! At 8:30 AM the sidewalks were wall-to-wall people. Office workers. They had opened the office towers along North Broadway above Sears. I couldn't believe my eyes. I turned the corner and I felt like I had stepped into Manhattan. Just a few years earlier, Main St at 8:30 in the morning would've been mostly deserted. Why would anyone have been there that early? Macy's wasn't open that early. There would just be some delivery trucks, at the Daitch-Shopwell, maybe a couple more at Joe's White Swan deli near Broadway. Back then the Sears site was still an AT&T parking lot. (A 'lot' not a 'deck.') One North Broadway was a small Con Ed office. There was a little insurance company further north on Broadway, a two- or three-story red brick building. (I think that's still there.) Then, closer to Hamilton Avenue, there was an old Victorian house converted to office's. I used to deliver the Reporter-Dispatch on that side of B'way. There was a prominent White Plains lawyer with an office in the converted house, I think. Basil Filardi. I used to deliver his paper. (Or was he on Church Street? I used to deliver the papers on Church Street, too.) Then it all changed. And kept changing. In fact, White Plains is still changing!

If I can go a bit off-topic, the old Battle Hill guy asked about the closing of Station Five. I don't remember the exact date but I think it was around 1973. I lived in the Battle Hill section then and the city's rationale was -- and remember, this is the city's side of this -- with the reconstruction and widening of Hamilton Avenue and Tarrytown Road, Engine 2 (66) would be able to reach the Battle Hill neighborhood so quickly that Station Five was no longer really necessary. Of course the evening my upstairs neighbor had a kitchen fire Eng 2 was OOS. The first company to arrive, and the only company on scene for several long minutes, was Truck 33. (The ALF tiller.) My roommate at the time recognized one of the guys on the truck as a buddy. He asked him, "Hey where's the rest of the cavalry? The truckie laughed and said, "Back at 159 South Lex." (I think that was the night somebody tried to put a couch down an incinerator duct. Lots of smoke in the hallways.) Anyway the kitchen fire where we lived was just a small section of wallboard that had somehow ignited. The truckmen somehow managed to put it out by the time Eng 3 (67) arrived. At least there wasn't much water damage!

The guys did a great job on Truck Five. Terrible that the truck is being stored outdoors. I really loved those old ALFs. As a kid growing up in the 1950s American-LaFrance rigs WERE fire engines and trucks to me. Is there room in any YFD station to store it?

In the era around 1959 WPFD had four engine companies (out of seven) operating Seagraves. Engs 1 (65) and 7 (71) were rated at 750 GPM with 150 gallon tanks. Engs 3 (67) and 5 (69) were 1,000 GPM with 300 gallon tanks. This information came from someone here a while back, someone from the White Plains Fire Department. I can't find the message but I saved the information in a Word file.

Like the lady in the link says, "You know you're from White Plains when..." That really takes me back. Thanks! Being a North Broadway-Lake Street boy I seldom saw Engine 1. When I did, about 1965, they were using an open cab ALF. Later on they stored -- was it an spare engine? -- in the rear of the bay at Station One, didn't they?

RIP Still a sad memory. I think FFs Callahan and Galasso were members of White Plains Truck 2?

He had a passenger? His nurse? Very bizarre. Lohud link

Good question! I remember the kid I was with but I don't remember why we were out so late or where we were coming from. I'm sure I got bawled out when I got home. Possibly it wasn't quite that late. I don't really remember.

One of my vivid childhood memories was rushing in to WPFD Station 3 late one night in 1964 (about 1 00 AM) to report a working fire a couple blocks away. The watchman was on duty and I told him there was a bad fire down the street. I showed him out the window and he could see the glow a couple blocks away. He hurried over to the radio to report it to Fire Headquarters and he sounded the alarm within the firehouse. The two other firefighters on-duty were asleep upstairs and as I watched they both came down the pole to the bay. Something I'll never forget. The way they did it, smooth and effortless, I could tell they had done it many times. It was a bad fire. An old carriage house converted to a storage facility for a greeting card company, located on Eastview Avenue near Lake Street (now the site is an apartment building). On my way to school the next morning I discovered Engine 3 was still there!

Yes there are two results that come up pretty quickly, towards the top of the list. The 'day of the fire' story -- a passerby reported it by stopping at Station 14 -- and a followup story detailing the arrest of twenty-year-old Steven Branda charged with arson. Yonkers Fire Dept. Chief Andrew Gerlock was mentioned several times as being the IC. I was growing up in White Plains at the time of this fire but I recall seeing Chief Gerlock's name in the newspapers occasionally. Thanks yfd95. Very nice! I live in Yonkers now and I'm very interested in the city's history.

The bowling alley is certainly well remembered in the bowling world.

Staten Island is really growing and changing. No longer the sleepy borough it was once upon a time. I have heard FDNY guys talking about it no longer being the quiet assignment it was once considered to be. Some days they get quite busy.

Fwiw the small-sized factory I used to work in had a fire alarm system wired to the local FD (all-volunteer). We had an ongoing problem with false alarms. We got a lot better with it over time. In the early years we might've had four or five a year to one or two (or none) in the last few years I was there. There were a variety of causes. The most common seemed to be someone inadvertently triggering an alarm. This usually happened when the alarm had to be reset for some reason. The area has a history of power surges on the electric grid and I think this used to disable the alarm. We had one or two guys that knew how to reset it. When they were out sick or on vacation the replacements often times triggered an alarm while resetting it. They could cancel it by calling the FD and verifying it was a known false alarm but sometimes they wouldn't do that. One problem was that the system had a very loud audible alarm in the building. Sometimes when the person succeeded in finally silencing the audible alarm they would forget to call the FD. Another problem was contractors working in the building -- especially electrical contractors -- sometimes managed to set off an alarm. Sometimes they wouldn't tell anyone. The people monitoring the system had been trained not to just call the FD and tell them there was no fire. If they didn't know why the alarm had been triggered they had to check the building first and that of course took some time. Another problem was a minor incident, like someone in the lab overheating a compound during lab testing, producing smoke. This would trigger the smoke alarms and that in turn set off the fire alarm. I was friendly with one of the upper management people responsible for the alarm system. He told me as time went by the on-site people responsible for the alarm system became much more adept at handling it. That there is a learning curve. They also had enhanced the procedures. For instance when the alarm went off and we did not know why at first --we could call the local FD and tell them we were doing an on-site inspection to determine if there was any obvious problem (smoke, burning odor) -- if there were no signs of a problem that would be relayed to the FD and they would then only respond the battalion car. They wouldn't turn out the apparatus. In certain cases where we were negligent and the FD had to make a full response I think we did have to pay a fine. I have to point out though, one night about 3 00 AM when the building was empty, we did have a fire. If not for the alarm alerting the FD this could've been a major incident. The water sprinklers limited the fire but they did not extinguish it. It was the fire department that put it out, and also opened up the building to prevent what could've been a lot of smoke damage.