Niagara St. Fire, Summer 2008
11/09/09 08:19 Filed in: Photography
I always seem to start my updated sites with these photos, but I like them and am still somewhat amazed that I was able to capture them. Last June there was a significant 4-alarm fire on Niagara St. in Buffalo. A pool supply warehouse went up in blaze and caused all sorts of havoc along the riverfront. The I-190 was shut down for a chunk of the day, several blocks surrounding the fire were blocked off, and residents in the area had to shut their windows or leave their homes due to the burning chemicals spewing into the fresh June air.
I was coming home from North Tonawanda and had my camera gear with me. I had spent a majority of the morning with my ipod on while taking photo’s up north by the falls and hadn’t heard about the fire. As we now know, the fire department had the blaze under control but sometime in the afternoon lost control when the brick building heated up again and caused the blaze to start up again. As fate would have it I was driving along the 190 when a huge plume of smoke rose into the air, not knowing what was going on I got off the nearest exit and followed the smoke on the surface roads. I had to pull over about four blocks from the fire, per the request of the very......very polite county sheriff. I parked on a one way side street directly off Niagara and tried walking towards the scene. Naturally the very.....very polite county sheriffs wouldn’t permit me to get within two blocks of the fire, which was useless to me due to my lack of expensive telephoto lenses. The advantage for me was that a month earlier I had a gallery showing for one of my undergrad classes in one of the warehouses that were in that area, and I remembered that a train track ran along all the warehouses. This track separated the tracks from the 190. Knowing that CSX would have shut down the rail for safety reasons I walked back a few blocks and cut between some buildings and headed down to the tracks.
From the moment I walked on the tracks I knew I would be getting some decent shots because there were nothing but firemen down there, no police. I’ve learned that if you respect what their doing, firemen will allow you to hang around and do your job, they’re not as ‘polite’ as county sheriffs tend to be. I approached the firemen with caution and inching closer with each shot. Eventually one of them said to me:
Fireman: “ How’d you get down here?”
Nb: “ Well I know the area and I knew that CSX would have shut the rail down and that the police probably weren’t down here.”
Fireman: *laughed* “Well since you out smarted the police and the news crews feel free to shoot away.”
I took his advice and took about 1500 photo’s of the fire for about 2hrs. Most of them were the same shot, with minor changes in crews and number of hoses and what not. I eventually got too cocky and headed back to the front of the fire by Niagara St and nearly was arrested by a Buffalo Policeman, granted he was just doing his job so I haven’t held a grudge. However yet again I did out think him and the only reason I didn’t get arrested was because I told him I was with the Rochester Times and I would surely be fired if I didn’t report back to my editor with at least one shot of the fire. He let me shoot for five minutes then sent me on my way, so I thank him for that, but there’s just one, minor detail...
There is no Rochester Times.
The full album can be found here. I’d really love the opportunity to spend a week or so with the Buffalo Fire Department. I need to look into that a little bit more I think.
-Nb
I was coming home from North Tonawanda and had my camera gear with me. I had spent a majority of the morning with my ipod on while taking photo’s up north by the falls and hadn’t heard about the fire. As we now know, the fire department had the blaze under control but sometime in the afternoon lost control when the brick building heated up again and caused the blaze to start up again. As fate would have it I was driving along the 190 when a huge plume of smoke rose into the air, not knowing what was going on I got off the nearest exit and followed the smoke on the surface roads. I had to pull over about four blocks from the fire, per the request of the very......very polite county sheriff. I parked on a one way side street directly off Niagara and tried walking towards the scene. Naturally the very.....very polite county sheriffs wouldn’t permit me to get within two blocks of the fire, which was useless to me due to my lack of expensive telephoto lenses. The advantage for me was that a month earlier I had a gallery showing for one of my undergrad classes in one of the warehouses that were in that area, and I remembered that a train track ran along all the warehouses. This track separated the tracks from the 190. Knowing that CSX would have shut down the rail for safety reasons I walked back a few blocks and cut between some buildings and headed down to the tracks.
From the moment I walked on the tracks I knew I would be getting some decent shots because there were nothing but firemen down there, no police. I’ve learned that if you respect what their doing, firemen will allow you to hang around and do your job, they’re not as ‘polite’ as county sheriffs tend to be. I approached the firemen with caution and inching closer with each shot. Eventually one of them said to me:
Fireman: “ How’d you get down here?”
Nb: “ Well I know the area and I knew that CSX would have shut the rail down and that the police probably weren’t down here.”
Fireman: *laughed* “Well since you out smarted the police and the news crews feel free to shoot away.”
I took his advice and took about 1500 photo’s of the fire for about 2hrs. Most of them were the same shot, with minor changes in crews and number of hoses and what not. I eventually got too cocky and headed back to the front of the fire by Niagara St and nearly was arrested by a Buffalo Policeman, granted he was just doing his job so I haven’t held a grudge. However yet again I did out think him and the only reason I didn’t get arrested was because I told him I was with the Rochester Times and I would surely be fired if I didn’t report back to my editor with at least one shot of the fire. He let me shoot for five minutes then sent me on my way, so I thank him for that, but there’s just one, minor detail...
There is no Rochester Times.
The full album can be found here. I’d really love the opportunity to spend a week or so with the Buffalo Fire Department. I need to look into that a little bit more I think.
-Nb
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