Bonnie Sklar was sitting in her Victoria Mews home about a month ago when she heard a loud boom.
“I thought a car blew up,” she said. “Then I see all this fire shoot up right by my window.”
It wasn’t a car blowing up that Sklar heard. , and flames were shooting about 30-40 feet in the air.
Victoria Mews contains 20 homes, and in the fire two were tarnished, although it wasn’t from fire. They were water damaged.
While putting out the flames, the Nyack Fire Department also sprayed the Victoria Mews building so it wouldn’t catch on fire. Just minimal damage was done to the outside of the buildings, except for the first two.
“I had taken a quick trip to Suffern and when I got back, the three blocks around my home were blocked off,” said Glen Keene, another Victoria Mews homeowner. “I couldn’t get anywhere near it, so I parked in the street, walked a little and from like a block-and-a-half away you could just feel the heat. It was a hot day already, but as you got closer you could just really feel it.”
On Monday, Keene and other Victoria Mews residents met up with members of the Nyack Fire Department to once again thank them for their work with the fire. They also presented the department with a check for $750 from the homeowners board. Keene said the board discussed it and agreed on the figure. The money comes from the board’s general fund.
“We just wanted to take this opportunity to show our thanks,” Keene said. “We didn’t want to just send in a check. We wanted to actually stop in and say thanks again to them. We think donating money to the fire department is great, but we felt that thanking them in person means much more.”
Nyack Fire Chief James Petriello, along with Deputy Chief Jim Weck and Battalion Chief Vince Reid, were on hand Monday to accept the donation.
“It’s not that unusual,” Petriello said. “We’ve had people make donations to the department after fires and floods before. It happens, not too often, but it happens. But usually when it happens people just mail in a check with a note thanking us.”
For the residents of Victoria Mews, though, they felt that making a donation and thanking some of the department members in person were just a few things they could to repay the firefighters for their efforts.
“I was getting home and had no idea what was going on,” said Rob Trudell, another Victoria Mews homeowner. “When I saw the fire, and then saw the firefighters, I just had this sense of relief. I saw how they already had everything under control and that really helped.”
In this case, they saved the homes of the Victoria Mews, and prevented what could have been a real disaster. Over the past weekend, with water main break, they also perfomed a duty that was not as visable. They met and developed a contingency plan to battle any blaze that might have occured in Nyack, by setting up a standby set of outside fire departments with tanker trucks. In doing this, they remained on duty the entire time - day and night -- until water service returned to normal. Once again, my deepest thanks and appreciation for untiring dedication of the Nyack Fire Department.