RAV: Plans are underway for a large communal memorial service Sunday for victims of New York City’s deadliest fire in more than three decades.
Seventeen people, including eight children, were killed when a fire broke out on January 9 at a high rise residential building in the working class Fordham Heights neighborhood in the Bronx, a New York borough with a large African and Latino community.
Funerals were held Wednesday at a mosque in the neighborhood of Harlem for 12-year-old Seydou Toure and his sister, five-year-old Haouwa Mahamadou.
Community leaders are preparing to memorialize the remaining 15 victims, all of whom had ties to the west African country of Gambia, on Sunday, one week after the tragic blaze. more here
“U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed investing billions of dollars in affordable housing in his Build Back Better proposal, but the massive spending bill has reached an impasse in a Congress divided along party lines.”
…sure, politicize it at the end for no reason and make it sound like those Africans would still be alive today but for those hateful Republicans, guess I know what kind of publication YOU are now…
…and when I was running fire, every Section 8 apartment building I was ever in had the batteries stolen from the smoke detectors, the hallway doors destroyed, numerous fires from stoves and space heaters, fire extinguishers taken, fires from pot roaches in the stairwells on cold days, and sometimes the local utes would set old matresses on fire in the stairwells because they were bored.
And these were ENGLISH speakers. Well, kinda.
Didn’t have ‘African’ communites back then, but based on the Africans I work with NOW and the way they behave during alarm pulls (since it’s hard to know what they understand, when you try to teach them something they nod vigorously like they understand, then do something stupid to prove they didn’t), given that and the large scrabble of kids they all have, I’d say ALL of those things were in play in this tragedy, and it wouldn’t have mattered HOW new and nice a building you gave them if they’re just going to steal the plumbing for the sprinkler system and use the sinks for their cooking fires…
“and when I was running fire, every ”
Am I missing something? So now you’re like a Battalion Captain or something? Help me out here.
No Brad, I was never more than a line grunt and never clsimed to be. “Running fire” does NOT mean I was in CHARGE of the fire, sinply that I was on the run.
You’re totally missing something. Battalion Captains don’t run into burning buildings. If he’s running fire, he’s the guy in the mustache leading by example….just do what he does and you’ll probably be O.K.
The point is, these guberment housing projects burnt down, so its the guberments fault. Those fine Gambians should secure legal representation and sue FedGov for murder.
Again, Aaron, its not “running THE fire, just “being on fire runs as an expendable pawn”, so I did not get to sit back and boss others. Also, I was the wrong color for the BIG city department, so the command structure didn’t include batallions.
Cheifs were there and didn’t typically go into burning buildings, but they get heat of the political kind that I didn’t envy them, so I’m not sure that’s a ‘safe’ place either.
But the Chief was a consuderation at a fire if he was a micromanager. There were 5 things you could remove to stop a fire;
1) Remove the heat
2) Remove the oxygen
3) Remove the fuel
4) Remove the chemical chain reaction
5) Remove the Chief from the scene.
Yeah man, I know. But you’re definitely the guy in the mustache all us new guys were told to emulate.
Except none of us new guys got to go to structure fires. We were the ones putting out brush fires by the freeway.In July. Full turn out gear. Pick, shovel, hoe.
I did get to fold the hose up and polish the hell out of the engine.
No one would go with my idea of putting spinners on the hub caps.
The inside of a burning house is hell, especially without breathing gear (SCBA).
Burr, hates the smell of fire boots to this day
JANUARY 17, 2022 AT 11:42 PM
“No one would go with my idea of putting spinners on the hub caps.”
Maybe not spinners, but the trucks I served on were old, one was older than I was, and all but the quint we bought while I was there had clangers on the rear wheels.
These were devices that were mechanical bells that only operated at low speeds in one direction, and this is what they used before beeping backup alarms became a “thing”.
I got in trouble once doing pumper driving training because of them. We did this training in the parking lot of the adjacent high school, and one one occasion when it was in session, I wanted to prove I could back up around the whole thing, and did. Problem was, it was right next to ground-level classrooms and between the clanger and my insistence that I follow Department policy and sound the air horn in three short bursts before backing, the assistant Chief got a nasty phone call from the school about disrupting classes or some such and he radioed all pissed to tell me to knock it off, which I did, right after backing out of the bus parking area.
He thought that last part was defiant so he took my apparatus driving privileges for a month.
Not as visually interesting as spinners, to be sure.
But certainly more annoying…
Hambone
JANUARY 17, 2022 AT 11:55 PM
“The inside of a burning house is hell, especially without breathing gear (SCBA).”
Yep.
But without gear, not for long…
Thank you SNS for another delightful tale. Just imagine all the kidz you inspired to become firetruck drivers.
Mostly dudes because I’m betting none of the skirts thought it was funny.
SNS “every Section 8 apartment building I was ever in had the batteries stolen from the smoke detectors, the hallway doors destroyed, numerous fires from stoves and space heaters, fire extinguishers taken, fires from pot roaches in the stairwells on cold days, and sometimes the local utes would set old matresses on fire in the stairwells because they were bored”
Reminds me of stories a good friend of mine who lived in various shitholes in Africa told me. Didn ‘t matter what the guilt ridden westerners of pallor donated (money, food, drugs, equipment, building materials, clothing, water purifying tablets, etc.) never reached it’s intended recipients. Whatever the corrupt politicians/police didn’t steal would be stolen by the locals and sold. She saw many shipments of aid (including water pumps/drilling equipment) being stolen. Those shiny new Nike sports shoes you paid for and donated never see the feet of a shoe less African child.
@Mrs radiomattm January 18, 2022 at 12:17 am
> guilt ridden westerners of pallor
Were they capable of guilt, were they capable of shame, were they even capable of embarrassment (as opposed to “proudly stupid”), they wouldn’t be anywhere near those smoking dumpster fires.
Mrs Radiomattm
A thousand times yes. Our old church back in IL had to learn the hard way, trying over and over and over to Perform Good Deeds and Bring the Love of Christ to a fishing village in Haiti. Over 15 years of missions teams going 3x a year, bringing donations of clothes, modernizing equipment, construction equipment and materials, educational materials (computers when there was only one electrical source for the whole village?). At the border the officials would hold the missions teams for hours trying to steal everything and demand bribes to not do so. One time on the way out they tried to keep one of our high school students, a lovely girl who was biracial, they insisted we were kidnapping a Haitian national. Her daddy was our private school football coach, one of the biggest patrons of our school was Senator Dave Syverson. I cringe to think what would have happened to her for lack of connection to someone influential. She would have disappeared into human trafficking without making so much as a ripple…
I went once and saw there was a beautiful Catholic church off the main square, utterly abandoned. I asked why it was abandoned and was answered with a smirk and a shrug. How bad does the reception have to be for the Catholic church to walk away?
Our church/school/feeding center now stands abandoned, and is being dismantled for building materials for crude huts and shacks.
In large part governments giving out welfare has changed the mentality of people. Culture plays a part. The scriptures are true, in the New Testament it says if a man doesn’t work neither let him eat.
Feeding people will not solve this.
I spent a little time in Fiji, I was amazed that almost all businesses were owned by Indi’s that we’re very hard workers.
The fijians would go to work only until they got paid and they would disappear until the check ran out. So the businesses were just hire a third more employees to make up for the slackers.
Also fijian’s that had any money would have their family or friend’s expect them to give them that money for some emergency.
Two cultures on an island with a huge difference between them, but the same opportunities.
the victims being memorialized is interesting. Is it the local mosque organizing this?
Space heater malfunction .. Any speculation as to why the space heater malfunctioned, Oh Media? Hey, I have a space heater, even though I live in Arizona (because Im a wimp when it comes to cold)
And I know if you let the thing run for hours on end, or if you were to yank the plug while it is running, it just might .. well .. malfunction.
But Im sure that point wont ever be brought up, as it might stigmatize members of that vibrant BIPOC community. So look forward to more “malfunctions”
Hey, you could even use the incident to further guilt the ungoodwhites