As tufts of smoke continue to rise from the skeleton of the CitiStorage building in Williamsburg, residents met with Councilmember Stephen Levin and representatives from the FDNY, Department of Health, Department of Environmental Protection, and the Office of Emergency Management last night to address community concerns over the massive seven-alarm blaze that destroyed the Citistorage warehouse last week.
Several attendees, including Levin, reported headaches from smoke inhalation. Emily Gallagher, a nine-year Greenpoint resident and member of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, started a petition with a coalition of neighborhood activists in the days after the fire asking the city to work with DEP and DOH to closely monitor the impact of the fire and develop improved protocols for dealing with future fires. The petition had 1,761 signatures at the time of the meeting. The group also wants air monitoring data to be released to the public.
“We don’t want to hear that it’s ‘okay.’ We want to know exactly what was out there so we can connect it to health problems that are happening today or might happen ten years from now,” Gallagher said.
Patrick Nagel
DOH Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Health Daniel Kass readily admitted that the scale and duration of the fire was unusual, and that the city shouldn’t have waited until the evening after the fire to send out a health advisory. But he emphasized that the department does not believe that the fire poses a long-term health risk to neighborhood residents. DOH is using New York State’s monitoring system to track air quality, and has so far found nothing to cause alarm.
“As terrible as this was, at least at a community level, we know that the air quality returned to normal after just a day,” Kass explained.
While people closest to the fire were at some risk of being affected by the smoke, there was not a significant increase in hospitalization for respiratory issues after the fire, and most symptoms appear to have been limited to headaches and sore throats. Kass pointed out that because the fire broke out overnight in very cold weather, most people were probably inside with their windows closed when the smoke was worst.
The cause of the blaze remains unknown. Pockets of fire continue to burn during the building’s demolition, and fire marshals have yet to be able to reach the suspected point of origin.
At the meeting, FDNY Deputy Chief Wayne Cartwright explained that at around 4:30 a.m., firefighters extinguished a small fire in the CitiStorage warehouse at 5 North 11st Street. That fire caused two sprinkler heads to engage, so the system had to be turned off for them to be replaced. With the fire seemingly out, firefighters left the scene.
Around 6:30 a.m. the department was called back to the building. By the time they got there, the warehouse was ablaze. The building’s steel frame and roof and its lack of windows made it difficult for firefighters get water to the fire, and brutal winds fed the flames; 275 firefighters were sent to try to control the inferno.
Cartwright refused to comment when an attendee asked why the department initially left the building while the sprinklers were disengaged, but gave his assurance that a full investigation is taking place.
“It’s going to be a while, but it’s all being looked into.”
