Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Explosion and Fire Accidents

Published on:

the two young New Yorkers who alerted the residents about a fire in their buildingThree people died and several people were injured in NY fire accidents that erupted mostly in the North West area of the city these past few days.

Yesterday morning 3 people were injured in a fire that started in a third floor apartment of a 5-story building located on West 184th Street near Amsterdam Ave in Washington Heights. One of the victims was critically injured while the two others only suffered minor injuries. Read more in the NY Daily News.

Also yesterday in Mount Vernon, NY a mother and her child died in a fire accident. The fire broke out at the second floor of a residence located on 13th street. 11 people lived in the house. A 30 year old mother and her 17th month baby both died in the fire. Another person was injured and transported to the hospital. The causes of the fire accident are not clear yet. Read more and see pictures on PIX11 

Published on:

A one year old boy died and six people were injured including two severely in a NYC fire accident yesterday morning morning. The fire started in a three bedroom apartment located on the 13th floor of a building located on Mother Gaston Blvd in Brooklyn NYC. Seven people were living in the apartment. Firemen rescued the bay boy but he died an hour later at the hospital. two other people are still fighting for their life and 4 others were injured but expected to survive. They were all transported to a nearby hospital. Read more in Brownsville Patch

Another fire broke at a new wing of the NYU Langone Hospital in Midtown Manhattan. Nobody was injured as the building was still under construction. Black smoke and massive flames caused by tar burning erupted from the rooftop. The smoke invaded the entire Kips Bay neighborhood. Read more in the NY Daily News

Yesterday 8 people including two firefighters were injured in a fire that erupted in a Bronx two-story houses (see NY Daily News). As the weather is getting colder in the City the number of residential fires has been increasing these last days.

Published on:

Building at 720 Hunts Point2 sisters died from burns after a radiator exploded in their apartment in the Bronx, New York City. 1 year old Scylee Ambrose and 2 year old Ibanez Ambrose were sleeping in their bedroom when a radiator valve blew off. The entire room quickly filled with hot steam. The two girls were rushed to the hospital but they couldn’t be saved.

The explosion occurred wednesday afternoon in a building located at 720 Hunts Point Avenue in the Bronx. The building shelters 5 homeless  families. It is run by the Bushwick Economic Development Corp. As part of a city program called cluster-site, five families are living in this building. The rent is paid by the city until the families can find permanent housing. The cluster-site program has a bad reputation. Many of the units housing families in this program are among the worst maintained and the most poorly monitored properties among all NYC shelters. Last year a report published by the Department of Investigation found “a lot of dangerous conditions at clusters”.

The building in which the accident happened has received 60 complaints form the Department of Buildings.

Published on:

fatal NYC fire accidentOne person died and 13 others were injured in a  fire accident in New York. Around 3:30 am yesterday morning a fire broke out in a residential building located on E. 93rd Street between 1st Ave and 2nd Ave. The building was a five-story building with 10 apartments. 250 firefighters were called to the rescue to battle the 6-alarm blaze. Most residents were able to get out using the fire escape. A resident living on the third floor wasn’t able to make it and died in the blaze. 3 other residents were injured as well as 8 firefighters. An elderly resident was saved by a courageous firefighter who used a dangerous technique known as roof-rope rescue.  Jim Lee was lowered on a rope off the roof of the building to save an elderly resident who was screaming for help from his third floor window. The courageous firefighter grabbed the man from his window and pulled him down to safety before the rope burned through. Residents said fire alarms woke them up in the middle of the night. They smelled smoke and quickly realized they had to evacuate the building. The fire erupted on one of the top floors of the building. Further investigation will be necessary to determine what caused the blaze.

Published on:

NYCHA_Logo_480x480Two toddlers died in a fire last April in a Bronx apartment belonging to the New York City Housing Authority. The investigation found that the apartment was visited four hours earlier by Rene Rivera, a former NYCHA maintenance employee. When a NYCHA worker visits an apartment they have to execute several safety checks that include smoke detectors check. The employee signed on his report that the smoke detectors were working in the apartment he just visited. He later confessed to investigators that he actually never looked at them. The employee’s failure to check the smoke detectors resulted in the death of two toddlers in a fire a few hours after his visit.

In an article Today in the NY Daily News, Rivera complains that the work overload at the Butler Houses was such that he didn’t have much time for safety checks.  Rivera blames the faulty error on an understaffed crew and unrelenting pressure to keep things moving. The 27-year NYCHA veteran worker explained that he was overwhelmed by the 25 to 30 appointments he had to respond to every day.

Read more in the NY Daily News

Published on:

Battalion Chief Michael FahyAn FDNY fire chief died and 20 other people were injured after a Marijuana grow house exploded in the Bronx, NYC.  NYFD Battalion Chief Michael Fahy was called with his men to 300 W. 234th Street in Kingsbridge after passersby reported a gas smell.

Fahy was directing his team from the street when the house exploded. He was fatally struck in the head by falling debris. 20 other people including firefighters and police officers were also injured during the explosion.  The investigators will determine if the explosion was related to the marijuana production or to a gas leak in the house.

Police indicated that the house was targeted by the police as a possible drug spot after they received tips a few weeks ago.

Published on:

lit cigaretteTwo people died and one person  was injured in two separate fire accidents in New York City yesterday. Both of them were sparked by lit cigarettes, officials said today. A first fire started Monday morning around 9:00 am in Queens. Andre Reid, a 69 year old retired firefighter died in the blaze. The man had first helped his wife getting out of the house and then he decided to go back in the house to retrieve something. Firefighters found him unconscious in his bedroom. He was transported to the hospital where he died from smoke inhalation. Later on during the day another fire was sparked by a lit cigarette in Brooklyn. The fire started in the bathroom of an apartment in Propsect Lefferts Gardens. There weren’t any smoke detectors in the apartment and the fire quickly spread to the rest of the apartment. A 65 year old woman died and another resident was injured.

Read more in the NY Daily News

Picture: courtesy of Wikipedia

 

Published on:

Metro North Fire AccidentInvestigators found that the massive fire that erupted below the Metro North train tracks in New York last Tuesday was caused by illegally stored gardening chemicals at the The Urban Garden Center. The store located on E. 116th had its storage area between E.117th and E.118th Streets just below the Metro North train tracks. Despite storing large quantities of propane, fertilizers, firewood, soil and other gardening chemicals, the store owners never bothered to  asked authorities for a permit to store flammable material in this location. According to DNA Info if they would have done so the permit would have been denied.  The fire accident happened after employees at the Urban Garden Store Center spilled fuel on a hot generator while they were refueling it. Employees didn’t wait for the generator to cool down before refilling it. They sparked a fire that quickly turned into a massive blaze when it spread to the the flammable chemicals sitting nearby in the the storage area. According to the Gothamist there were at least 20 tanks of propane stored there illegally. The Metro North train services were interrupted until yesterday. Thankfully nobody was injured in this accident. Picture: courtesy of Ben Parkin on Twitter

Published on:

The massive fire that dSerbian_Orthodox_Cathedral_of_St._Savadestroyed a 19th-century Serbian Orthodox cathedral in Manhattan is being investigated. The fire started Sunday a little bit before 7:00 pm at the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, on West 25th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The orthodox Easter services had ended a little bit before and the church was empty. The roof which was made of wood was  one of NY’s largest Gothic timber hammer beam roofs.  It was completely destroyed.  The rest of the building is structurally sound according to the preliminary inspection of the department of buildings. Read more in the Gothamist

Published on:

NYCHA Buildings2 baby girls died in an apartment fire in the Bronx, NYC yesterday. According to the NY Daily News, a pregnant mother left her two year old daughter and her 18 month old sister alone in her apartment while she was going to do the laundry at a nearby laundromat. She also left some incense burning in the house and may have disabled the smoke alarms. According to the New York Housing Authority who owns the building where the fire happened, the alarms were functioning five hours before the blaze.

A neighbor also told the Newspaper that the mother,  26 year old Haya Conce, was always burning incense by the window and she often left the kids alone in the apartment. She was warned that it was dangerous but she ignored the warnings. When the firefighters carried the dead bodies of her babies out of the building shes collapsed on the sidewalk. Firefighters said the dramatic accident may have been prevented if the fire alarms hadn’t been disabled.