Father's Day Fire Astoria, Queens: Nine-Year Anniversary

A brick-strewn lot stands now where once a thriving hundred-year old business stood. The family business, General Hardware, is now housed in a snazzy new facility a block or two away. On a pole, at the corner, is a special New York Street sign bearing three names, and across the street, on the wall of an industrial building in this gritty, nondescript area is a wall-sized graffiti, tribute to the victims: Brian Fahey 46, Harry Ford, 50 and John J. Downing, 40.

On Father's Day, 2001, a thoughtless youth decided to play with gasoline near a flammables-laden hardware store. Neighborhood rumor had it that the gasoline was intended to make graffiti-removal more difficult. The area surrounding the warehouse was isolated, with big buildings and big walls for the perfect canvas. But who knows? Kids often do strange things and the combination of an explosive and a teen is never a desirable one.

On that day, the fumes reached open flame, a pilot light inside the warehouse. More importantly, the flames ignited an improperly-stored propane tank located in the area of greatest lethality. With that, a 100-year old building was blown apart. Sixty men, women and children were injured that day. Two firefighters in critical condition were successfully saved from the jaws of death by the timely action of medical professionals, some of whom are undoubtedly wondering now whether their own jobs are safe with the rash of hospital closings that have been hitting.

I live not far away and stood rooted to the ground in shock as firefighters from municipalities I had never heard of converged on the scene. I was not aware that firefighters from Long Island and surrounding states could even come to a debacle in New York City. It had never been done in my lifetime, but there they were, the scores of trucks, working as one without whom the entire neighborhood would have been ablaze. That is the tragedy that did not occur and the one you will never hear about because brave men did their jobs.

In the ensuing days, the Red Cross came and the people who once lived above the destroyed hardware store were scattered to homeless shelters and relative's basements. This needless horror of bad zoning, disregard of fire codes in the interest of business (the propane was used by contractors, not barbecuers) and poor parental supervision brought heartache to so many. After that day, my lungs were never quite the same and when I returned home I had to seal my windows and run the AC, just as I would a few weeks later when the Word Trade Center's Twin Towers were blown to pieces by madmen.

This story is brought to mind today as I read about a 10-year old Rockaway, Queens child, covered in burns over half his body because fire was just too fascinating and gasoline too close by. Those firemen who died nine years ago may never get a more impressive monument than their names added to a street sign and a makeshift graffiti monument on the wall across the street, but if we remember how dangerous the combination of gasoline and children is, perhaps they will not have been forgotten entirely.

Sources:
http://stevespak.com/fathersday.html