LBFD battles fire on East Bay Drive

Long Beach firefighters rushed to the scene of a fire on Monroe Boulevard and East Bay Drive Wednesday evening, after a utility pole snapped and crashed onto two vehicles, causing multiple power outages in the area, Fire Commissioner Scott Kemins said.

"The pole just failed — it looked like it just splintered into pieces — and it dropped a transformer and wires onto two cars that were underneath it," Kemins said. "Obviously, we couldn’t extinguish it until PSEG came and turned off the power.”

Kemins said the incident was reported at 5:23 p.m., and the fire took about an hour to extinguish. One firefighter sustained a head laceration and was taken to South Nassau Communities Hospital, where he was treated, Kemins said.

He added that just before 8 p.m., power in the area was restored.

The fire occurred near the tennis facility on Bay Drive and in the west end of the parking lot that's home to South Nassau Communities Hospital’s Emergency Department at Long Beach. Kemins said that smoke had entered the facility, which is about 100 feet from the utility pole.

Both Kemins and Joe Calderone, South Nassau’s senior vice president of corporate communications and development, said patients were not evacuated.

“They had patients that they were transferring out anyway, but there was no evacuation needed and the vehicles were far away enough from the building,” Kemins said.

He added that three large fans were brought in to clear out the smoke.

“There were winds, but I don’t know if that had anything to do with it," Calderone said. "There was some smoke that got into the [emergency] facility. We did not evacuate — we got some fans going and got some smoke out."

Calderone said that 11 patients were inside the building when the incident occurred, and no one was injured.

“We did go on diversion — the facility was not taking patients because the Fire Department was taking care of the fire in the parking lot,” he said. “The power did go out, and we went on backup generator power."