FDNY Brooklyn Box 4080: 17 Vandalia Avenue 12.18.1998

The Waldbaum’s Supermarket Fire and Collapse: FDNY 1978-2019 41st Anniversary Honor, Remembrance, Learning’s The Waldbaum Super market fire, Brooklyn, New York occurred on August 2, 1978. Six firefighters died in the line of duty when the roof of a burning Brooklyn supermarket collapsed, plunging 12 firefighters into the flames. The fire began in a hallway […]

As we approach the July 4th holiday period, two significant LODD incidents previously occurred during this time frame

Eleven Minutes to Mayday: Lessons from 2008 Resonate Today

Join us Tonight-Monday night August 3, 2015 at 7:30pm ET for a special live podcast on Firefighternetcast.com on Blogtalkradio on Taking it to the Streets, Lessons From the Fireground: The FDNY Waldbaum Fire: Insights, Remembrance and Learnings with host Christopher Naum, colleagues Joe Pronesti and Doug Cline and special guests Chief Vinny Dunn, FDNY (ret) […]

The Thirty-five year anniversary of the FDNY Waldbaum’s Fire and Collapse: Do you know the lessons learned?

Rapid changing conditions and smoke explosion result in close call to operating companies in New Jersey

“Firefighter Falkenhan was a well-respected and experienced firefighter. He died performing his duties during a very complex incident with severe fire conditions and unique fire behavior coupled with the immediate need to perform multiple rescues of victims in imminent danger. It would be easy if one particular failure of the system could be identified as the cause of this tragedy. We could fix it and move on. Unfortunately it is not that simple. No incident is “routine”. MarkÂ’s death and this report reinforce that fact”. From the Baltimore County (MD) FD LODD Report.

This incident appeared from the onset to be a routine “room and contents” fire that the SFFD encounters on a regular basis. As the Companies were performing standard fireground operations, the incident rapidly deteriorated due to a hostile fire event. The failure of a window in the fire room allowed fresh oxygen to enter the room, providing a fire that was deprived of one of the key elements of combustion to rapidly intensify.

On what began as an uneventful Saturday night twenty-one years ago, a fire on the 22nd floor of the 38-story Meridian Bank Building, also known as One Meridian Plaza, was reported to the Philadelphia Fire Department.