A fire lieutenant died Thursday evening fighting a smoky and blinding fire that enveloped a high-rise apartment building in Brooklyn at the site of the former Ebbets Field, city officials said.
At least four other firefighters and four residents of the apartment building were injured, but none of those injuries were considered life-threatening.
The fire lieutenant, Lt. John H. Martinson, of Engine Company 249 of Brooklyn, died after a full-scale assault on the 14th floor of the 25-story apartment building at 1700 Bedford Avenue, fire officials said.
Lieutenant Martinson was found unconscious on the floor about 10 feet inside the apartment where the blaze started, the officials said. He was found with his mask off, and was carried out of the building by fellow firefighters. The apartment was empty, officials said. It was not immediately clear what caused Lieutenant Martinson’s death, but firefighters struggled all evening with choking and blinding smoke. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but is not believed to be suspicious, a fire official said.
Lieutenant Martinson, a 14-year veteran of the department and the son of a firefighter, was the department’s first fatality of the year. His follows the deaths of two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building, on Aug. 18, 2007.
The gravity of Thursday night’s fire was apparent on the black, smudged faces of firefighters, who gathered in clusters on a bitterly cold evening outside the building after the blaze was brought under control.
“We lost one of our brothers tonight,” one of them said as he cradled an air tank and stood somberly with five other firefighters.
About a mile away, at the firehouse at 491 Rogers Avenue where Engine Company 249 and Ladder Company 113 are based, the American flag was flying at half-staff at midnight. Police tape was tied around a light post and a fire hydrant, blocking the sidewalk in front of the firehouse, where Lieutenant Martinson was based.
A resident of Staten Island, Lieutenant Martinson, 40, was been a New York City police officer before joining the Fire Department in 1993. He was married, and he and his wife, Jessica, had a 22-month-old son, John Patrick.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking at Kings County Hospital Center, where Lieutenant Martinson was taken, said the lieutenant was also survived by “8.3 million New Yorkers who are safer” because of his service.
The mayor said that he had spoken with the lieutenant’s widow. He told reporters late Thursday evening, “The one thing the wife wanted me to say and that is the thing I can’t say: I can’t bring her husband back.”
The residents of the apartment where the blaze started had left their apartment, but had left the door open, Mayor Bloomberg said at the news conference. The mayor said that the open door allowed the hallway to fill with smoke and was partly to blame for the smoky conditions.
In a telephone interview Thursday night, Thomas DeLisio, 71, a next-door neighbor and a lifelong friend of the Martinson family, said the lieutenant was a born and bred Staten Islander. His father was a firefighter who died of kidney disease, Mr. DeLisio said. He noted that Mr. Martinson had been a police officer, but that “he gave that up because he always wanted to be a firefighter like his father.”
“It’s a heartache,” said Mr. DeLisio, a retired bakery truck driver. “He’s got a young baby and they just took over the grandfather’s house and remodeled the house. And they didn’t even get to move in it all the way.” Mr. DeLisio recalled that Lieutenant Martinson once said, “Tom, it’s too quiet here. I’ve got to work in Brooklyn. There’s not enough action on Staten Island.”
The two-alarm blaze at the Ebbets Field Houses trapped residents on upper floors, filled hallways with smoke and soot, and sent water from fire hoses cascading down stairwells, residents said. The cold weather also hampered firefighters, who at times could be seen sliding on ice formed by water from their hoses.
A Fire Department spokesman said more than 100 firefighters and 25 trucks and other firefighting equipment responded to alarms at the building, which has 400 apartments. The emergency call came in about 7:15 p.m., he said, and the fire was brought under control shortly after 8:30 p.m. Two of the injured firefighters were taken to the burn unit at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.
The building was not evacuated and many residents remained indoors, frightened and uninformed.
Basil Patrick, a 56-year-old chef who lives alone on the 24th floor, said in a telephone interview, “I have wet towels around the rim of my door and right now I’m in the apartment and my eyes are burning and my nose is running and there’s nothing I can do.”
He added, “The hallway is full with smoke. It’s like all the light bulbs are broken or something. It’s black out there. When I opened the door, I let the smoke in. I’m stuck up here and I’m scared.”
Lieutenant Martinson was the 1,138th firefighter to die in the line of duty in the department’s history, and the first since Joseph Graffagnino, 33, of Ladder Company 5, and Robert Beddia, 53, of Engine Company 24, died while battling a seven-alarm high-rise fire at the former Deutsche Bank building, at 130 Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan.
The two firefighters became trapped on the 14th floor of the building, which was being dismantled. They suffered severe smoke inhalation and died at a hospital.
Following the deaths of the Firefighters Graffagnino and Beddia last summer, the Fire Department announced that it would change the way it inspects buildings under construction or being torn down, to avoid the confusion that contributed.
