NYC Blaze Called Biggest Since WTC Attack (Photos: It’s huge!)

NEW YORK - A raging fire laid waste to a complex of seven old warehouses on Brooklyn's waterfront on Tuesday, sending a huge plume of acrid smoke over Brooklyn that evoked memories of the World Trade Center attacks nearly five years ago.

Shortly after the walls of one five-story brick warehouse collapsed, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said the cause of the 9-alarm fire would be investigated as possible arson.

"We're calling it suspicious in origin," he said in a street news conference two blocks from the scene. "The buildings were fully involved with fire when the first units arrived. That plus the fact that it started early in the morning are indications of a suspicious fire."

Eighty units and more than 400 firefighters joined the battle, using several tower ladders on three street sides while five fireboats pumped water on the flames from the East River, a technique the department calls "surround and drown."

More than 6 million gallons of water were poured on the blaze, Scoppetta said, and the fire was "holding but not under control" by noon, more than six hours after it erupted. The ninth alarm was posted about an hour later.

Scoppetta and Chief of Department Peter Hayden said eight firefighters had suffered minor injuries but no civilians were hurt, nor was there any need to evacuate the area. Scoppetta identified the warehouse owner as Joshua Guttman, but had no other information.

John Mulligan, a department spokesman, said the fire was the biggest, exclusive of the World Trade Center, since a 19-alarm fire at Brooklyn's St. George Hotel in 1995. He said the WTC disaster was so large that the department quit counting alarms.

The site is on the waterfront in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, a mixture of 19th century and small shipping and manufacturing firms. The famed Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor, was built in a shipyard that adjoined the warehouse property. The nearest homes are at least a block away.

The flames were clearly visible from the east side of Manhattan, where rubberneckers slowed morning rush hour traffic on the FDR Drive past the United Nations buildings. The acrid smoke, smelling at times of wood, rose in a huge black cloud visible for miles.

The fire started just after 5:30 a.m. and blazed furiously for six hours. At midmorning, the partial collapse of the largest of the seven warehouses caused utility wires to tug on nearby poles, one of which vibrated as if about to split. The crashing brick walls left only the corners of the five-story building still standing. Flames also spread to a storage lot where at least one rental truck was destroyed.

Area residents, watching from behind yellow tape, said the warehouses were destined to be torn down, for a park or other development. Some parts of Brooklyn's long-neglected waterfront have been targeted for new housing or other purposes.

"They're going to save a lot of money on demolition," said Yuda Geller, a real estate agent who lives in Greenpoint.

"A block away, you could feel the heat," said Filip Mielnicki, 17, a neighbor watching the blaze with his friend, 18-year-old Wojciech Wasilewski.

The two, students at Manhattan's High School for Environmental Studies, said they had often "hung out" in the warehouse that caved in. It contained a lot of old clothing and boxes of blank checks but was otherwise unused, Mielnicki said.

They, among others, remarked on the smoke cloud's resemblance to the pillar that drifted across Brooklyn for two days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Fire officials said the warehouse complex on West Street between Quay and Noble streets — measuring 200 feet by 800 feet — was officially unoccupied, though it was unclear whether squatters were living there. Bales of cloth burned in one of the warehouses, Scoppetta said.

Here's a round-up on the issue. The thing that tweaked FReepers the most was the partisan shots taken by Chelsea in her Talk magazine piece. She specifically "recalled" wondering whether the government would have sufficient resources to address the attacks given the then recently-approved tax cuts.

http://www.wnyc.org/blog/lehrer/archives/2004_06.html

Chelsea Clinton's September 11th experience
June 07, 2004

On our show last Friday, Dick Morris said Hillary Clinton is lying in saying her daughter Chelsea was near the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Senator Clinton made the comments in an interview she gave a week after the attacks and Morris says Chelsea contradicted her mother in her own article five months later. The former aide to President Clinton and now syndicated columnist uses this to attack the Senator’s credibility.

But on closer inspection of both Clinton’s accounts, the truth is a little more nuanced. Chelsea wrote that she was watching television in a Union Square apartment when the planes hit, but was in the World Trade Center’s vicinity when they actually collapsed. Senator Clinton seemed to indicate Chelsea was there “when the planes hit,” seemingly confusing this with the event that happened an hour later.

On September 17th 2001, Hillary told Jane Pauley on NBC’s dateline that Chelsea had gone on “what she thought would be a great jog” and that she was going to go around the towers. She followed this with, “and then the plane hit,” leaving the impression that Chelsea was jogging downtown at the time of the collision.

In November, 2001, Chelsea wrote an article in the now-defunct Talk magazine about the day’s experience, and this is where the contradiction arises. Based on press reports of the article, Chelsea doesn’t mention anything about a jog, but she talks about seeing the plane hit the tower on television in the apartment.

Morris took this to mean that Chelsea’s story turns Hillary’s on its head, making Hillary an outright liar and on our show last Friday (and in his book), Morris characterized Hillary’s comments like this:

‘Chelsea decided it would be a great day for a morning jog and she jogged around the towers of the world trade center. She heard the airplane hit, she heard it she did. And she was saved because she had ducked into a coffee shop.’ Now we know that’s a lie. Chelsea 5 months later wrote an article for Talk magazine saying she was home in her apartment.

With these comments, Morris says you get the impression that Hillary’s account puts Chelsea downtown when the planes hit. Here are Hillary’s comments as quoted from a transcript of the Dateline piece he refers to:

Senator HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: She'd gone what she thought would be a great jog. She was going down to the Battery Park, she was going to go around the towers. She went to get a cup of coffee and--and that's when the plane hit.

PAULEY: She was close enough to hear the rumble.

Sen. CLINTON: She did hear it. She did.

PAULEY: And to see the smoke...

Hillary doesn’t mention anything about Chelsea being “saved” by the coffee shop, but the mention of jogging so close to the planes being hit, might suggest Chelsea was in more danger than she actually was.

Also, Morris says Hillary is referring to the planes hitting when Hillary says, “she did hear it,” but the rumble they refer to is more likely to be the towers collapsing than a planes’ collision. (and there is always the possibility that NBC edited out comments in between).

At the time of Chelsea’s article, Matt Drudge made a big deal of this by quoting Chelsea as saying she was “miles from Ground Zero -- when she learned of the attacks!”

But Chelsea did write that she was downtown when the towers actually collapsed (“12 blocks away”). She had over an hour to get from Union Square (where she saw the – presumably second – collision at 9:03 AM ) to lower Manhattan (where she was when the towers collapsed at 10:05 AM). Mapquest estimates the distance at 2.1 miles. Here’s a quote from the Talk magazine article (as reported by The Chicago Tribune):

I remember very little about how I got so far downtown…I do remember standing in line at a phone somewhere and hearing a deafening rumble.

On the show, Morris used this as a reason that Hillary Clinton would not make a good President:

Take that as an index of character and personality. Do you want a president who completely and utterly, makes out of whole cloth, not an exaggeration, fabrication, makes something like that up in order to bond more closely with the rescue workers, the cops, the firemen who booed her offstage?

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