An overnight fire destroyed several businesses on Main Street in Flushing, Queens. Massive flames and clouds of smoke made it nearly impossible for more than 100 firefighters to bring it under control. At one point, a roof collapsed.Video: Fire Destroys Businesses In Queens
Water used battling the blaze collected on the tracks of the nearby No. 7 subway line, causing service to be temporarily suspended through the area. However, service was restored, but one track is out of service, which will cause delays for the morning commute.
The fire is also located near a staging hub for buses and other above-ground transportation.
Video: Huge fire rips through pair of buildings
26 comments:
Urban renewal.
"Urban renewal."
-Asian Lightning.
I go out to Bayside via 7 and bus every few weeks, I have noticed a trend that some store signs no longer have -any- English.
Also, remember the fuss about the Korean language only on the billboard near the LIRR-Northern Blvd crossover, a few years back? I see now there is another with the only English being "3G".
I wonder if anyone will complain, or have the last Americans moved away.
That Victorian building
was the home of Flushing's
first (?) or oldest (?) liquor store..."Spivak's"
A sign on the east side of the building once proclaimed something of that nature.
H-m-m-m....
maybe arson(?) paving the way for the development of an "under-utilzed" piece of property?
Or the financial crunch leads the owner to consider collecting
"fire insurance" as a way of bailing out?
Back to the early days of
Tommy Huang and suspicious fires!
And the long closed Caldor's
store right across the street doesn't bode well for a "vibrant bustling" bust of a once varied and viable town!
So...waz-up C.M. Liu?
Someone following in cousin
Tommy's footsteps?
Now let's see what kind of spin
Myra Baird Herce and her gang at the Flushing Chamber (pot) of Commerce will be putting on this one!
She can always hire "Parkside" to do some PR consultation work.
They're a bit expensive but wasn't there some money left over (???) from the defunct Downtown Flushing Development Corp. Donald Manes'
old "baby"?
The Bowne House is next!
(Dried up old wooden structure
sitting on quite a parcel of land).
Glad I take the LIRR
and bypass that stinking downtown!
"Only 23 minutes to Broadway", as George M. Cohan might sing.
Is there a Chinese lightning bolt throwing god like Thor or Zeus?
Hey...
CB#7's Gene Kelty is an FDNY
fire captain.
Let's see what he makes of all this!
When I first saw this on the early morning news, my first thought was arson. Old buildings, wood frame, perfect location for urban renewal. With the economy coming to a standstill, look for a significant rise in insurance fraud cases. There have also been reported cases of lease owners torching their cars for the insurance money. This kind of behavior will hurt us all.
OMG Spivak's along with Trunz Meats, Breslin's and Alberts Hosiery. Flushing's shopping district was great before it became "vibrant and bustling".
What exactly do "non-english" signs have to do with a fire?
Perhaps if you took the lirr you wouldn't have to see the offensive signage.
The Caldor building is owned by Vornado.
"Non-English" signs usually mean 10 people per room with a rat’s nest of electric heater extension cords.
Those cable usually lead to alligator clips on some suckers breaker panel bus.
.....that or Arson to make way for more tax exempt Asian Church Barricks !!
I take the LIRR to avoid
inhaling Flushing's many "exotic fragrances" (phew)!
The non-English signs don't particularly offend me
since I grew up with them on the lower east side.
If I wanted to live in a 3rd world overcrowded cesspool, however, I'd have chosen a more colorful architecturally more interesting city like Bangkok over
a lowly backwater town like F-Liu-xhing!
Odd.. This is the second big fire I can remember in that area. The last one destroyed the Hair School I went to.
You're all a bunch of racists.
Move back to Kentucky and go to your KKK meetings.
Its refreshing to see these comments in 2008, Be sure to vote for McCain so that darkie doesn't get elected.
Go away. really, just crawl back into your holes and try not to get run over by the 7 train.
No one is being racist. People are commenting on what they see before them in real life, a disregard for our architectural history and every effort made -PERHAPS EVEN ARSON- to pave the way for more and more development by people, whether crowded Asians downtown or Italian/Greek contractors tearing down equally historic structures in quiet neighborhoods.
Actually it's very well known
that an awful lot of Asians are prejudiced against those "darkies" you're referring to.
I've heard many of them
use the "N" word while dismissing "them" as "uneducated" or
"bad people".
Then there are those countless stories of Asian merchants following African American customers around their Flushing establishments as soon as they walk through the door.
One African American woman actually brought a civil suit against one Asian shop owner who locked her in the store suspecting she had shoplifted an item.
It seems to me that there ought to be an Asian chapter of the KKK somewhere.
Or are they already in existence calling themselves "benevolence" associations?
I walked by the site yesterday
(about noontime).
On the scene were a couple of fire marshals (one wearing a hat marked "explosion" unit or something) CB#7's chair Gene Kelty, some DOB,
Con Ed and MTA people.
Boy, did the demolition crew
pull down the remnants of those buildings fast.
I hope that the FDNY first conducted an inspection for any evidence of the fire's origin !
H-m-m-m-m...
wadda ya say it's cover up time once again in the olde towne? !!!
People are commenting on what they see before them in real life, a disregard for our architectural history...
Architectural history my ass. What are you pining away for... those lovely brick cubes?
"'Non-English'" signs usually mean 10 people per room with a rat’s nest of electric heater extension cords."
Definitely NOT racist.
Quote: "Architectural history my ass. What are you pining away for... those lovely brick cubes?"
OBVIOUSLY our architectural history has already been raped. I was pining for...hmm...those two buildings and maybe 10 others left in a 5-mile radius? Pathetic, indeed!
Was'nt there a law to prohibit these strange non English signs some time ago. When some moron decides to torch his building the fire dept will know whats inside. At least the restaurants have enough sense to do that.
I grew up in Flushing in the 1950s & 1960s and remember a really fine place. When I left NYC for North Carolina around 1984, Main Street was already under siege, and upon my occasional return, I realized that I would never want to reside there again. That said, I still feel for the residents who would like to see Flushing return to some semblance of its former self. Flushing was always a mix of ethnicities, but none of them tried to remake it in the image of their former homeland. Many of these people are greedy and unscrupulous developers with no regard whatsoever for architectural sensibilities. The blogger who asked if the Bowne House was next, was right on target. And what is racist about condemning the criminals who would exploit their own countrymen by exposing them to substandard and often deadly living conditions?
perhaps shedding some light on this story might help everybody. My small time business was burned down due to the fire spreading from the next door building. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. After talking to the fire chief, he'd said that arson is a highly unlikely cause. It'd be appreciated if everyone could lay off the racism, What makes this town worse than any other?
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