By JOSEPH KELLARD
The July 25 fire started in a hangar-like refuse area where discarded air conditioners, refrigerators and scrap metal are stored - the same area, under essentially the same conditions, where a fire occurred in September 2003. In both incidents, investigators said, a payloader was involved in sparking the fire.
A major problem the firefighters faced in both fires was difficulties with fire hydrants on the property. Oceanside Fire Department Chief Sean Lynch, who commanded eight fire departments at last week's fire, said that the hydrants were either inoperable or unable to provide enough water to fight the blaze.
"The first hydrant we came to was not functioning properly," Lynch said. "And the hydrants that were working properly were giving inadequate water supply."
As the fire continued to rage, firefighters had to stretch hoses to hydrants on the west side of Long Beach Road to get the necessary water pressure to successfully battle and ultimately extinguish the blaze. Thus police had to shut down the main artery in both directions, from Daly Boulevard in Oceanside to Empire Boulevard in Island Park, for about three hours, from late morning until early afternoon, causing severe traffic jams.
At the scene of the 2003 fire, then OFD Chief John Traverso said that one hydrant on the transfer station property was functioning at first but blew out, a second failed to work, and two others provided an inadequate water supply. In that fire, too, the firefighters used the hydrants on Long Beach Road, and had to shut it down for a few hours during the late afternoon and into the rush hour.
Since the faulty hydrants are town-owned, the town, not the fire department, is responsible for ensuring that they provide adequate water for fires and similar emergencies. "We really can't force them to improve the hydrants," Lynch said, "however, their lack of doing so every time they have a major incident there will disrupt traffic, because we'll continue to have to do what we'll have to do."
About the hydrant malfunctions, Trenkle said, "The broken hydrant, the main hydrant, is going to be repaired."
Meanwhile, the cause of last week's fire was roughly the same as the 2003 fire.
"The cause of the fire is listed as mechanical friction - sparks as a result of metal, either from the payloader blade or a refrigerator unit itself [that was crushed under the payloader] being slid across the concrete floor and contact with exposed metal reinforcing rods," explained Gene Pitzak, a fire investigator at the Nassau County fire marshal's office. Pitzak added that "more than likely, the first item ignited could have been insulation and foam in the refrigerator unit, or the sparks kicked out into combustible material that was in the pile."
The September 2003 fire was ignited when a payloader in the refuse area dragged a metal bucket along the concrete floor and produced sparks that ignited combustible materials in a mound of rubbish. The pile contained discarded home appliances and landscape materials such as tree branches and bushes. These materials are stored at the Oceanside facility before they are transferred to a recycling or other refuse-related facility.
Asked about the changes the town may make to prevent another fire from breaking out under similar circumstances, town spokeswoman Susan Trenkle said, "We're getting an environmental engineer to come in and look at everything, and obviously we would make any changes based on the engineer's recommendations. The Department of Environmental Conservation was down at the facility [after last week's fire] and is fine with what we're doing there. But any changes that might help we would want to incorporate." Trenkle pointed out that even though there have been two similar fires over the past two years at the transfer facility, there had been no such incidents on the property in previous years.
After last week's blaze, Lynch said that the intense heat it generated caused a stress crack in the transfer station building from the foundation all the way up, and he was concerned about whether the building was structurally sound. The town has since investigated the matter and has found no such crack.
"We brought an engineer the next day," Trenkle said, "and he reported that it wasn't a stress crack, and that the building is structurally sound."
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