Inside Attack Tried as Big Streams Are Set Up for Doomed Restaurant
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Assistant Chief New City, N. Y., Fire Department
Probably every fire officer has a gut feeling about at least one building in his district that it is sure to burn some day. In New City, N.Y., that building was Ronaldo’s Restaurant.
About 6 a.m. last Feb. 3—a 10-degree, windy morning—a policeman saw Ronaldo’s Restaurant completely enveloped in smoke and fire glowing in some of the windows. In response to his radio report, police headquarters notified the county fire dispatchers to alert the New City Fire Department.
Soon after dispatch, and within a minute of each other, Chief Lawrence Willows, Jr., Assistant Chief Gregory Sansone, and Ex-Chief Dan Kroenung, Jr., arrived and started planning the attack. The firehouse is no more than a quarter of a mile away from the restaurant, and the trucks were just arriving, thus giving these officers a chance to properly position them. The high westerly winds made them decide to keep all personnel and apparatus away from the east side of the building.
Aerial apparatus requested
Although the extremely heavy smoke condition warranted, at least initially, an interior attack, all agreed with the chief to get two additional aerial pieces, and another heavy-duty rescue on the road. While setting up New City’s equipment, Willows requested a 75-foot tower ladder with a pump and a rescue truck from West Nyack, and an 85-foot quint from Congers to supplement our own 85-foot quint and rescue truck. At this point, we were not condemning the building to water towers, but wanted a jump on positioning trucks we knew would inevitably be needed.
On our arrival, a policeman advised us that the restaurant had closed about 4 a.m. but that we should assume someone could be in the apartment upstairs. Subsequently, the New City Volunteer Ambulance Corps was dispatched to the scene just in case it was needed.
The 50 X 120-foot building, a landmark at Congers Road and N.Y. Route 304, was 3 1/2 stories high, wood frame with balloon construction. There were a few additions, subroofs and an apartment with offices upstairs. We knew the building had a sprinkler system, but we couldn’t at first determine whether it was operating.
Initial attack
Captain Fred Marinozzi had a ventilation crew working with tools and a saw while our aerial ladder was being used to trim out windows. At the same time, Lieutenant Tom Landau had crews from the first-due pumper advance two 1 3/4 -inch lines to the second story landing to try to enter the apartment on the north end. As the fire started breathing, it started to move and it forced Landau’s crews out after two rooms were searched. The lines knocked down a good volume of fire on the north of the building, but fire was burning fiercely in the floors above and below. We soon learned that the building had been vacated earlier.
By this time, New City’s rescue truck, two more pumpers and the equipment truck were on the scene. Since the fire was now through the roof, additional water supplies were being set up for the two arriving aerials. Our aerial had been positioned in the parking lot, at the southwest corner of the restaurant, thus leaving room for Congers Ladder 3-85 to take a position at the west side of the building.
West Nyack Ladder 24-75 was put to good use at the northwest corner, where it could maximize building coverage on two sides. We assumed that these positions, aided by the wind factors, would most effectively push the fire out the fully involved southeast corner of the restaurant.
Stretch 4-inch line
Willows had New City Engine 9-1500 stretch a 4-inch line from a hydrant south of the fire to supply needed hand lines for the southern portion of the restaurant, where Lieutenant Ed Hewitt had crews moving lines to that part of the building, which was most heavily involved. Later, this line would also be used to supply Ladder 9-85 for hand lines and the ladder pipe when the section of roof that truck was covering caved in. First-due New City 9-Tanker was already hooked up to a hydrant across the street from the restaurant, and was soon to prove itself to be the workhorse of the fire.
Since the fire condition of a good portion of the building now required water towers, additional supply lines were stretched from the tanker. At the peak of the operation, its 1500-gpm pump supplied a 4-inch line to Ladder 3-85, a 4-inch and a 3-inch line to Ladder 24-75, a 3-inch standpipe line, a 2 1/2-inch hand line, two 1 3/4-inch hand lines, and its own preconnected deluge gun with a 1 3/4-inch straight tip. The hydrant the tanker hooked up to was on a 22-inch water main, thus accounting for its ability to pump such a large volume. On our l 3/4-inch hand lines we used large volume automatic nozzles, affording us both flow and maneuverability.
Smoke boils above restaurant doomed by time of first alarm in New City, N.Y.
Photos by Brian Sears
The mystery of the sprinkler system was partially solved, when warm water from the fire dripped on the pipes in the basement and thawed out the system. This occurred an hour and a half into the fire .while crews were working some remote inside sections of the building that weren’t being bombarded by master streams. Suddenly, they found themselves amidst sprinkler water coming at them from all angles. Of course, that necessitated getting to the valve and shutting the system down, but that wasn’t before control headquarters radioed the message that automatic flow alarm was finally coming in. That transmission received more than just a few chuckles.
Deluge gun used
Willows then decided to set up a deluge gun at the southeast corner of the building where Engine 9-1500, which had no master stream device, was working. So he had Engine 9-1000 stretch a 4-inch line from another hydrant, east of 9-Tanker, but on the same large main, to that location.
The original 4-inch line supplying Engine 9-1500 was on a small main and needed a boost, so the pumper from Hillcrest (6-1000) that had relocated to New City’s headquarters since the beginning of the fire was called to the scene to handle the job and to supply manpower relief. Now needing replacement backup, the New City chief requested that the Haverstraw Fire Department send a pumper and crew to stand by.
It took about four hours to bring the fire under control, and another four hours to complete overhaul operations, mop up, and thaw hose. Needless to say, everything was covered with ice. The New City Ambulance Corps and our department’s first aid squad, fortunately, had to deal only with weather-related injuries, such as falls on the ice and frostbite. Because of the extreme cold, crews had to be constantly rotated.
The arson unit of the County Bureau of Criminal Investigation found evidence of multiple fires.
