One fire truck and a handful of firefighters responded to a report of a brush fire that broke out in Whalen playground at East 205th Street and Perry Avenue in the Norwood section of The Bronx on Friday afternoon, March 10. A brush fire is a fire involving low-growing plants.

 

Eyewitnesses said some people had already tried to put out the fire a bit, before the FDNY arrived at around 3.44 p.m., as it had started to spread.

 

The FDNY later said they were alerted to the incident at 3.38 p.m., that there were no reported injuries, and that the situation was brought under control at 4.12 p.m.

The fire itself was about 1 foot in height at the time the FDNY arrived and had burned a grassy surface area of about 15-20 square feet, close to a tree, located behind a railing which separated the area from the actual playground.

 

An elderly man was seen attempting to stomp out the remaining fire with his walking stick, while another man was heard saying to him, “No, let the fire department do that. They get paid to do that.”

 

When it was suggested that he be careful, the elderly man insisted he knew how to put out a fire. Norwood News attempted to speak with the man who had encouraged the elderly man to let the FDNY handle the situation but he preferred not to comment.

We later spoke to Anthony Kotcebue, who had been in the playground when the fire broke out, and asked him what happened. “We were sitting, listening to music and somebody behind us told us there was a fire, and we happened to see it. Probably one of the kids that let the grass on fire… we don’t know,” he said, adding that as he recalled, there were about three kids in the area by the tree before the fire broke out.

 

Asked what time that was, Kotcebue replied, “That was about 3.20 p.m.”

 

Norwood News later asked the firefighters if they could tell how the fire started. They said that as the grass was very dry, it had probably ignited quickly [once in contact with a flame], and suggested it had probably been started by kids.

Before the FDNY arrived, we asked Kotcebue if someone had phoned the department. He said, “Yeah, somebody phoned the fire department, and let [them] know there was a fire, and that it was spreading through.”

 

He added that it had been bigger than seen in the attached photos. “Somebody put it out a little bit,” he said. When asked how big, Kotcebue said, “A little portion right here, by the tree, right here…” He added that there had been a cardboard box in the area of the fire.

 

Asked if the person who had reduced the spread of the fire had prevented it from reaching the tree trunk, he said, “Yeah.. and then it expanded a little bit and then it went down.”

We later spoke to one woman who preferred not to give her name, who was with another woman and two small children, standing outside the playground and asked her if she knew what had happened. Speaking in Spanish, she said, “The truth is we don’t know. ” Asked how many people were in the playground at the time the fire broke out, she said, “There were a lot of kids but I couldn’t say how many…….about 20.”

 

Kotcebue summed up the incident saying, “Nothing too major…we’re all still alive.”