Expected to Burn For at Least Two More Days

A LARGE, "FORTRESS-LIKE" WAREHOUSE IN ELIZABETH, New Jersey, has been burning since Wednesday, confounding the FD's attempts to get to the seat of the blaze.

Star-Ledger photo

The large complex is riddled with tunnels, compartmentalization and holes throughout the building making it impractical for FF's to find their way through the maze.  It is believed to have begun on Wednesday afternoon when someone set a junk car on fire inside the building.  It has since spread througout the entire structure and started into a second building where the FD was able to contain it.

The Star-Ledger reports this morning:

A sprawling warehouse fire in Elizabeth that has spewed thick black smoke across northern New Jersey for two days could burn through Christmas, and the structure may suffer several "catastrophic collapses" before the blaze is extinguished, officials said.

The fire swallowed the center section of the largely vacant facility around 6 p.m. today, according to city Deputy Fire Chief Lathey Wirkus. Fire officials say flames from the eight-alarm blaze are so intense they will have to let more portions collapse before they can launch another attack.

The fire has burned for two days as more than 250 firefighters from 35 fire agencies struggled to attack the flames. One firefighter suffered minor injuries Thursday afternoon, Wirkus said.

Elizabeth Fire Chief Tom McNamara said the maze-like design of the building is making it nearly impossible for firefighters to approach the base of the blaze, while the choking smoke and intense flames are stalling prolonged operations inside the structure.

The Star-Ledger also posted this video report on the fire that includes comments by the Elizabeth fire chief and the mayor:

The century-old building was first used as an automobile and airplane assembly plant and was more recently a large bakery that produced Girl Scout cookies until ten years ago.  Since then it has been subdivided and used by several occupants including a tire wholesaler who has 1,200 tires stored inside.  Another area is stacked with plywood panels.

Still Out of Control

Update:  Fire marked under control at 3 pm Pacific.
Update 2:  Fire knocked down 4:30 pm Pacific.  Scroll down for latest info.

A LARGE, WIND-WHIPPED FIRE IN A San Francisco, California, apartment building is burning out of control at the time of this posting.

KGO-TV

The fire began just before noon Pacific time in a large Victorian home and soon spread into an apartment building next to it.  As fire units were arriving it spread rapidly to a second apartment building and was soon through the roof.  The response has been upgraded to 5 alarms.

At last update, no injuries have been reported yet.  There is no further information available while the fire is still working.  Check back for updates later.

This raw video from KGO-TV picks up just before the firefighters were ordered off the roof of the 2nd building:

KGO-TV also is running a live-stream video coverage HERE.

KPIX-TV Ch. 5 has filed this video report from their helicopter:

KGO-TV also has posted a 34-image photo gallery HERE.

Update, 4:30 pm Pacific:
The fire is under control and knocked down now.  There were 140 firefighters on the scene at one point and this was the city's first 5-alarm fire in six years.

There were two minor injuries reported, one for a firefighter with neck burns and the other for a civilian.

There is still no indication of what started the fire.  It began at the rear of a 4-story Victorian and spread to two other buildings, the large apartment block and a charter school that was closed for the Christmas break.

KGO-TV photos

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21 Detectives Combing Scene

THURSDAY MORNING SAW 21 DETECTIVES and arson investigators arriving at the destroyed home in Washougal, Washington, where a gunman held off police while his house burned down Wednesday.  (See Firegeezer report HERE.)

The Columbian

With the aid of a cadaver dog, the investigators located two human bodies and four dog carcasses.  They are looking for a third human because there were three residents and nobody from the household has turned up.  Steven Stanbary, his wife Leona, and Leona's twin sister all resided in the house.  The bodies are charred and it will possibly be a few weeks before any postitive identifications can be made.  It will also be some time before the coroner will be able to determine whether the deaths were caused by bullets or the fire.  However, they were able to deterimine that one of the dogs had been shot.

KOIN-TV Ch. 6 posted this video report on the day's activities:

The Columbian has more information about the Stanbarys personal backgrounds HERE.

As tweeted by @Boston_FF_L29

UPDATE (6:33 am):

Pictures tweeted by @ProvFireVideos

Sad morning.

Incident timeline by @BOSTON_FF_L29

BOSTON & Needham, Ma., USA Boston Ma.Firefighter (L29). Tweeting Local, National Fire News & MY Opinions, NOT those of L29, L718 or Boston Fire. For Wx tweets follow me @L29_SNEWeather

BOSTON_FF_L29 Normally I would have gone to sleep, but this fire seemed different from the start…and got worse by the minute (7:15)

Pictures posted by Matthew Gregoire, Providence Fire Videos, @ProvFireVideos

Thanks to James for catching our headline typo.

STATter911 with additional video and media reports

Fox 25: Worcester firefighter dies in blaze (live helicopter feed ended)

ABC 5: Massive Blaze Destroys Apartment House

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Bombs Are Exposed, Evacuation Has Begun

Firegeezer note:  This is a continuation of a story begun Friday about the defusing of more than 20 bombs and mines that were exposed in the River Rhein during a record-dry month in Germany.  Preparations have been made to evacuate 45,000 residents, half the population of Koblenz while two vary dangerous mitigations take place on Sunday.  If you haven't read it, we urge you to read Part 1 from yesterday HERE before you continue.

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THE TWO-TON BOMB WAS surrounded by a sandbag cofferdam on Friday so that the water around it could be pumped out.  The bomb must be out of the water in order to be defused.

On Saturday the water was pumped out, exposing the bomb in preparation for the mitigation operation on Sunday. The bomb has the explosive potential to create a crater 60 feet wide and 16 feet deep and demolish a city block, authorities said.

The evacuation of the city areas affected, a 1.6 km radius, was begun on Friday with a target time of Sunday 9 am for completion.  About 2,500 fire, police and volunteers are guiding the evacuation.   The Local.de reports:

The city has already started getting its people to safety. That includes around 700 people in two hospitals – including some very ill people in intensive care.

The hospital evacuations took place on Saturday  (dpa)

 "This has already started, as it takes a lot of time, but it should be completed on time – most people will be on their way to other hospitals on Friday," (A fire dept. spokesman) said. "The old people’s homes, where we have around 520 people to move, will be evacuated on Sunday itself – we will have around 300 vehicles including ambulances to move them."

Around 200 prisoners will also have to be moved from the jail, which houses people accused and convicted of crimes from theft to murder, spokeswoman Andrea Kästner told The Local.

"We mostly house people in investigative custody, so they have not been convicted, but they are accused of a very broad range of crimes, from theft to murder. Of course some of them could be considered dangerous," she said. "We are gathering information from other prisons in the state about how many spaces they have. It will be a huge operation. We have people working here who have been here since the 1970s and there has certainly not been anything like this in that time."

She said normal prison buses would be used to take the prisoners to other jails where they would spend the night, but then be returned on Monday.

The regular citizens have already begun their self-evacuations and will be gone from the danger zone by morning.  For those without their own transportation there will be buses running from 6:30 am until 9 am on Sunday morning to take them to the designated shelters.

There is a live webcam aimed at the site (not visible until daybreak around 1 am Eastern time) but it will be deactivated during the most crucial time of the defusing operation.  CLICK HERE to watch it.

Updated postings will continue.  Check back on Firegeezer Sunday morning.
If you follow updates on Twitter, the hashtag is #bombeKO

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FD Appears to be Making a Good Stop

Updated, 1 pm Central.  Scroll down.

A MAJOR FIRE IN THE VILLAGE OF PULASKI, Wisconsin, is still burning this morning but appears to have been contained.  Fire departments from four other counties are assisting the Pulaski Tri-County Fire Department at the incident.

WLUK-TV image

The fire started around 11 pm Friday night in a bowling alley in the center of the block and spread to at least five other buildings.  There are twelve buildings in the block but the FD thinks they have stopped the spread.

WLUK-TV has this early video report from the scene:

Pulaski has hydrants in town, but the large fire flow quickly depleted the water supply and they have been relying on a tanker shuttle to supply the multiple master streams and hose lines.

This updated video report from WLUK-TV has additional information plus more tanker coverage.  (Firegeezer loves a good tanker shuttle.)

While they are certain on the location where the fire started, it is not yet known what caused it.

The Green Bay Press Gazette is reporting that shortly after 6:30 am Central, Brown County Emergency Management officials said 16 county (departments) were involved in fighting the fire, and that firefighters from Shawano, Oconto, Outagamie and Calumet counties also had been called to the scene. In all, 23 (fire companies) are battling the blaze.

Two firefighters have been transported for injuries received working the fire.

The fire is still burning at the time of this posting.  We will update the story when more information becomes available.  Check back later for more.

Update, 1 pm Central:
The fire was knocked down to just hot spots by 9:45 am, according to the Green Bay Press Gazette.

All news sources are reporting that the FD is certain that the fire began in the Wood Lanes bowling alley.  The state fire marshal office is sending assistance for the investigation which will probably begin on Sunday.

About 40 people have been displaced from their homes and apartments following their evacuation during the fire.  Several people who lived in rooms and apartments over the businesses involved in the fire have lost their residences.

WLUK-TV has filed an extensive updated video report (with more tankers! ….ed.):

This Google Street View shows the block affected by the fire.  The Wood Lanes bowling alley is the brown building second-from the right:

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Piling Up Continued For Several Minutes

A CHAIN-REACTION ACCIDENT involving 52 vehicles occurred over a several-minute time span Friday night on A-31 autobahn in Germany.  The wreck began around 7:15 pm when traffic suddenly drove into a fog bank.  As the cars piled up, several people became trapped inside their cars.  Two people who were able to escape from their car started to walk away but were struck and killed by another car that drove into the mess.  A third person died inside his car.  A total of 35 others were injured enough to need transporting.

WN News

There were 150 firefighters and 250 emergency medical workers on the scene for several hours as victims were located in a crash site that  extended one kilometer along the roadway altogether.  It took 24 hours to completely clear the wreckage and debris off the road plus more time to repair damaged spots in the pavement.

WNTV prepared two video reports.  First one taken early during the fog:

Next one taken next morning when fog lifted and helicopter could get up:

Westfaelische Nachrichten has the STORY.

Hat tip:  Christian Lewalter

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Nurse Held Without Bond

THE REGISTERED NURSE WHO WAS arrested and charged for the arson at a Sydney, Australia, nursing home Friday has been identified.  Police have disclosed that Roger Dean, 35, has been charged with murder and arson in the one-story nursing home where he worked.  He had been seen earlier on television news reports as he told the journalists that he had helped evacuate  patients as the fire was raging inside.

Dean had been working at the Quakers Hill Nursing Home for about two months.  He had resigned from his previous job at another nursing home following a dispute with the management.

Dean is shown at the 0:45 mark on this earlier video report:

He has been charged with four counts of murder, but is expected to also be charged with a fifth following the recent death of one of the survivors.  There are still 32 victims hospitalized with 14 of them in critical condition.  Police are not commenting on the specifics of the arson nor disclosing the motive, if any.

9News has the STORY.

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Suspect Had Been Interviewed by Police Just Prior to Fire

It has been disclosed that Dean had been interviewed by Sydney police just a few hours earlier in connection with his previous work location.  Co-workers there had filed a complaint against Dean and the officers were investigating it.  While talking to Dean at his home Thursday evening, the officers were called away on an emergency leaving the interview incomplete.  The fire was set Friday morning around 5 am.

The Sydney Morning Herald adds:

The deadly blaze took hold at the nursing home, about 500 metres away from Mr Dean's townhouse, just before 5am on Friday. It is believed one fire was set with a cigarette lighter on bed sheets in an unoccupied room. The second fire was set in a room believed to have been occupied.

At the scene on Friday morning, Mr Dean told reporters: ''I just quickly did what I could to get everyone out. The smoke was just overwhelming.''

Dean pictured outside the fire building sucking in
taxpayer-supplied oxygen during the incident.  (AFP)

However, later that evening he was arrested at Mount Druitt police station after a police inquiry that involved interviews with nursing home staff members.

Police said it was expected to take some time to piece together what happened, after two fires were believed to have broken out in separate wings of the Quakers Hill Nursing Home in the early hours of Friday.

The 100-bed facility had three separate areas for high-care residents, low-care patients and those staying in respite care. There were 87 residents in the home on Hambledon Road when the fire broke out. Two people died in their rooms, while a third died after being rescued from the home. A fourth person died in hospital on Friday afternoon and the fifth died yesterday morning. The bodies of the two residents who died in the home were removed on Friday night.

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Two month anniversary – "Bat Signal" during Brooklyn Bridge march

From YouTube narrative posted by ajacxslim:

Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin spoke to Mark Read, one of the Occupy Wall Street organizer who pulled together a team of friends and artists that arranged for the projection to happen.

Read says he got help from two video projection artists, Max Nova and JR Skola, who used a 12,000 lumen projector and programmed the software needed to properly program the message.

He also found an apartment in a nearby housing project from where they safely angle the projection on to the building. He says he offered to rent the apartment from a single mother of three, but when she found out what they wanted to use it for — and saw what happened during the eviction of Zuccotti Park — she refused to take their money.

Boing Boing article: Interview with creator of Occupy Wall Street "bat-signal" projections during Brooklyn Bridge #N17 march. By Xeni Jardin at 11:15 pm Thursday, Nov 17, 2011.

In the Jardin article, Read describes the sity-run housing they projected the image from:

Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled.

There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more.

I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully "there." But then I got a call from a person who sounded pretty sane. Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

Interesting use from " … a community of friends who deploy spectacle and art in the service of radical politics."

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Update: 

Response to Dave and Mike:

To the BATCAVE! from Freddy Carrasco on Vimeo.

Apparent Arson

Update:  Arrest Made, Man Charged.  Scroll down.
Plus More Videos Added.

A FIRE IN A SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, NURSING HOME Friday morning killed at least four elderly residents and sent about 60 others to hospitals for treatment.  Most of the residents affected were bed-ridden and unable to help themselves.  Early reports say that there were two separate fires set in the building. 

Channel 10 News

AdelaideNow is reporting:

The Quakers Hill aged-care facility in Sydney's northwest did not have fire sprinklers installed even though other states require older structures to retro-fit with the firefighting measure.  It is understood that two fires broke out in separate wings of the single-storey structure about 5am this morning.

Homicide detectives will lead Strike Force Westall, which will include forensic investigators, to determine the cause of the fire.

The inferno tore a large hole in the roof of the facility, which had to be structurally secured before investigators entered the scene.

* * *

Meanwhile, it is understood two young officers were among the first on the scene of the fire at Quakers Hill Nursing Home, and raced inside with little or no safety equipment before dragging out a number of residents.

"The commissioner and the deputy commissioner have just met with two very young police, one of them a probationary constable, shirts covered in soot and dirt … who were instrumental in my view in saving lives," Superintendent Robert Redfern told reporters outside the facility in Quakers Hill.

Adelaide Now / Grainger

EuroNews has filed this brief video:

ABC-TV (Aus.) has a later in-depth report HERE.
The Sydney Morning Herald has MORE.

Adelaide Now has a 60+ image photo gallery HERE.

ITV News filed this video:

ABC News has another good video here showing scenes inside the fire building:

UPDATE:  ARREST MADE.
New South Wales Police have arrested a 35-yr.-old man and charged him with four counts of murder.  The man is a registered nurse and lives in the area, but they have not said if he is employed at the nursing home that burned.  Following intense investigation, he was arrested early Saturday morning (note the time difference).

The unnamed man has been refused bail and will be arraigned later in the morning.

The corrected count of injuries stands at 32 with 15 of them in critical care units (five of them with severe burns).  The death toll remains at four. 

ABC News has the latest HERE.

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