That Was Some Fire

The Greenpoint waterfront was on fire yesterday, as a 10-alarm blaze burned down part of a historic factory complex, the Greenpoint Terminal Market:

The blaze burned all day as it consumed a former rope factory on West Street near the site of the Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, which launched the ironclad warship Monitor for the Union 144 years ago. The fire blackened the sky above northern Brooklyn with thick smoke shot through at its base with bright flames a block deep. The plume could be seen for miles.

“It was like a flamethrower,” said John Czaplinski, who lives nearby on Noble Street. “The fire was leaping from one building to another.”

More than 350 firefighters from at least 70 units spent all day at the fire, those in front retreating to safety when entire walls crumbled and launched smoldering red bricks 100 feet down the narrow streets of the waterfront. At 10 alarms, it was called the city’s largest fire in more than a decade, excepting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The speed of the blaze and the fact that it started just before dawn in abandoned buildings led investigators to suspect arson, said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. The buildings were owned by Joshua Guttman, of Lawrence, N.Y., a real estate developer with a history of buying commercial properties and turning them into condominiums.

A lawyer for Mr. Guttman, Joseph Kosofsky, said the developer had no idea how the fire began. “It’s the last thing in the world we need right now,” he said. “He’s a very substantial guy. If someone set fire to it, it could have been squatters, it could have been anybody. How in the hell can you watch 21 acres of industrial property?”

. . .

The complex was originally the site of the American Manufacturing Company, built around 1890 initially to make rope and bagging, later manufacturing 10 million pounds of oakum, a jute fiber used in caulking seams on wooden ships, according to the Municipal Art Society. By 1913, the company employed 2,234 workers, many settling nearby in Greenpoint.

. . .

Firefighters fought to keep the flames from jumping West Street, where the buildings were linked by overhead corridors. Shortly after 9:30 a.m., a shower of bricks, plaster and beams crashed onto that street, inches from a parked car. A short while later, the facade of a different wall first buckled, then caved outward, collapsing onto Noble Street.

Commissioner Scoppetta said he expected firefighters to work through the night, followed by the demolition of what remained of the buildings. No one was forced to stay out of their homes, he said.

Mr. Kosofsky rejected any suggestion that Mr. Guttman could have been involved in the blaze. He said the destruction wrought by the fire caused more problems than the demolition Mr. Guttman had planned.

“We can knock it down in a half a day,” Mr. Kosofsky said.

“He is devastated; he is very upset,” Mr. Kosofsky said of Mr. Guttman. “He does not need this aggravation. He had big plans. It is holding him up. He does not need the publicity.”

Councilman David Yassky was on the radio yesterday saying that he was pushing to have the site landmarked.

From Hunters Point, Queens at around 8:00 a.m.:

The Boom Box Looks OK, But I Don’t Know About That G5 Tower

Vado Diomande, the man who became ill from anthrax inhalation, has had most of his belongings incinerated. And others using the same building that housed Diomande’s storage facility also had some very expensive stereo equipment “incinerated”:

When Justin Kafando, a member of Diomande’s dance company and co-owner of Megastar Studios, housed on the third floor of the 2 Prince St. location, took the microphone after Diomande spoke, he could not contain his anguish. He said his life has been destroyed because of the cleanup.

“You have nothing to do with this,” he assured Diomande, adding, “Everything I’ve worked for, all my dreams have turned into a nightmare.”

Then he broke down in tears and could not continue speaking, though he answered questions later on.

Kafando’s recording studio was totally destroyed. Among items removed — worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — were speakers, microphones, all CD’s, hard drives, a G5 tower, the air conditioning unit, all software in boxes and personal documents from a cabinet. Even petty cash totaling a couple of hundred dollars was missing. Diomande told the press that 600 sealed boxes of CDs of his music were also taken away. Tradewinds, an independent contractor, was hired for the 2 Prince St. decontamination. The E.P.A. provided technical consultation, and D.O.H.M.H. had final say in decisions. The building owner had to pay for the cleanup, said to cost between $500,000 and $2 million.

Kafando was told that one speaker was contaminated; yet every expensive speaker is gone. Meanwhile, one worth about $25 wasn’t removed. Kafando related that the boom box that was in the rehearsal room was moved into the control room and set up with the cheap speaker that didn’t belong to it, so the workers could listen to music while they were decontaminating. The big, costly keyboard workstation is missing, yet the cheap one, which was back to back with it, wasn’t touched.

This Is Getting Scary . . . I’m Gonna Shoot Somebody

This Post thing seems to be getting more complicated:

Mr. Stern, 34, an admirer of Walter Winchell who is fond of fedoras and three-piece suits, had been working for The Post since 1997.

. . .

On the tapes, Mr. Stern asks Mr. Burkle to invest in his clothing line at one point, according to a person who said he knew what was on the tapes. He lives in a house in the Catskills which he bought in 2002, with his wife, Ruth Gutman, who Mr. Stern referred to as Snoodles, the nickname of a character from the 1942 movie The Palm Beach Story.

Actually, that’s just the ridiculous part. The complicated part follows:

But while the accusations against Mr. Stern were serious, it was the specter — raised by at least three people who said they knew what was on the tapes — that Mr. Stern implicated several celebrities and New York power figures in an undisclosed, symbiotic relationship with Page Six that prompted an extraordinary day of full-throated and at times gleeful gossip among those who love, hate and avidly read it.

Those who said they know what is on the tape said Mr. Stern named Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax films, and Ronald O. Perelman, the chairman of Revlon Inc., as among those who had finessed their coverage on the page. Through a spokesman, Mr. Weinstein flatly denied any improper relationship with the page and its main editor, Richard Johnson.

Mr. Perelman’s company had once hired Mr. Johnson’s finance, Sessa von Richthofen, to whom he is getting married Saturday, as an administrative assistant. The executive who hired her said today that she had not been pressured into hiring her.

. . .

In their meetings, Mr. Stern described three levels of “protection” he could offer to Mr. Burkle, according to those with knowledge of what is captured on the tapes.

When Mr. Burkle pressed Mr. Stern to explain how this would work, Mr. Stern at first cited a few examples involving his boss, Mr. Johnson. He said, for example, that Mr. Johnson, his boss, had a “script deal” with Mr. Weinstein — something Mr. Weinstein denied today. “The New York Post and Page Six have always been above board with our company,” said a Weinstein company spokesman. “There was never any script deal.”

He also said that Ms. von Richthofen was employed by Mr. Perelman, the financier.

(R. Kelly reference meant to underscore the faux gangsterism of the situation and a sense of disbelief about the incomprehensible turn of events, not to mention the fact that fedoras and three-piece suits are rather fey . . .)

(I suppose at this point it’s not a bad idea to reacquaint yourself with Sweet Smell of Success, in which case alternate titles for this post could include “The Hunsecker Proxy” or “Sweet Smell Of ‘Finesse'”.)

Callow Hal’s Death To Be Investigated

After Hal the coyote died shortly before he was to have been released, questions are being raised about his treatment in captivity:

Five days after the wily one known as Hal dropped dead, there’s no shortage of theories about what killed him.

Was it poison? A hidden disease? Or human error?

Hal led cops on a wild chase through Central Park last month, only to be captured and die suddenly while state wildlife officials were tagging him.

Some wildlife rehabilitators fear a Department of Environmental Conservation biologist and a Cornell graduate student who tried to tag Hal were unnecessarily rough with the stressed-out animal.

Meanwhile, a veteran wildlife pathologist performing the necropsy on Hal’s body said a heartworm infestation may have contributed to his demise — and he’s also trying to determine whether the carnivore wolfed down rodenticide.

“One thing I want to look at is did it eat something containing some poison along the way,” said Ward Stone, a top researcher with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

“There was a lot of internal bleeding, and so we want to find out the explanation for that.”

Meanwhile, the Post conjures up images of Geneva Convention violations:

Workers caring for the Central Park coyote — who died before he could be released into the wild — aggressively hogtied the animal, wrapped his snout in tape and lassoed his neck because they feared being bitten, a source said yesterday.

Hal’s shocking treatment likely contributed to the young coyote’s death as workers, under the supervision of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, tried to tag him for release back into the wild, the source said.

But a DEC expert said it’s too soon to know for sure.