Construction Fire Breaks Out on Roof of Fulton Center

Firefighters raised a ladder to the roof of the Fulton Center during the hour-and-a-half it took to extinguish the blaze. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Five firefighters were hurt and scores of workers evacuated when a fire broke out inside the roof of the Fulton Center, at Broadway and Fulton, just before 1:30 p.m. today. The blaze at the $1.4 billion transit center—currently under construction and set to open next June—resulted from sparks that ignited insulation material during a welding job, according to MTA spokesperson Kevin Ortiz. It was brought under control shortly before 3 p.m.

With an afternoon temperature reaching 100 degrees, five firefighters suffered from minor, heat-related injuries—two of whom were taken to New York-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital, a Fire Department spokeswoman said. (Of the remaining three, one refused medical treatment and two were treated on the scene.)

“You could see the smoke billowing pretty good [from outside],” said Sean Hannon, an engineer for CAPCO Steel, one of the project’s contractors. He and his fellow workers were evacuated from the sub-basement along with, he estimated, 200 other workers who exited the building.

“It was a little scary,” he said, “in that we could have been trapped, ‘cause we were two floors down below [street level].”

Hannon noted he didn’t hear the three short ‘blasts’ of an air horn that typically signal an emergency and the need to evacuate the site. Instead, he said, “Someone was running around, calling, ‘Get out, get out.’ So that’s when we said, ‘I think we better get out.”

By the time he and other workers were let back into the building to retrieve their equipment, water, which was “coming down like crazy” from the upper floors, had drenched their drawings and ash covered their toolboxes.

“It was really not a big thing,” said a steam fitter (he declined to give his name) who had been on the third floor and smelled smoke inside the building. “They evacuated us real quickly, sufficiently, right out the building.”

Marshals are further investigating the cause of the fire, FDNY Assistant Chief Ronald Spadafora said at the scene. “It’s not suspicious,” he added.