El-fire and brimstone
B’klyn rush-hour blaze blamed on ’60s wiring
A decadesold power cable is blamed for a massive electrical fire on elevated Brooklyn subway tracks Thursday that delayed morning commuters as it rained sparks on the street below.
The fire — caught on camera by a bystander — broke out near the Broadway-Myrtle Ave. station on the J, M and Z lines around 8 a.m., said an FDNY spokesman.
Blinding flashes of light accompanied by loud hissing noises flared beneath tracks that run over Broadway on the border of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick. A cloud of black smoke shot skyward, the video shows.
“The pops and sparks lasted for maybe five or 10 minutes,” said Sam Dusman, who shot the video on his way to work.
The fire was extinguished after 45 minutes and no one was injured, according to an FDNY spokesman.
NYC Transit President Richard Davey said a preliminary investigation found the fire was caused by a power cable crews believe was installed in the 1960s. Davey said has ordered a full review of the system’s aging electrical equipment. “This is a challenge with a legacy system like NYCT that you have equipment that is multidecades old that have lived beyond its useful life,” said Davey, who is a month into the job.
“I want to understand,” Davey said. “Have we been using duct tape to fix these problems, and do we need a concerted campaign to fix them?”
Metropolitan Transportation Authority crews shut down power on the tracks during the fire, causing major delays in J, M and
Z service throughout the morning. The tracks were deemed safe at noon, but service delays continued on the lines into the afternoon, transit officials said.
Dusman, who uses the Broadway-Myrtle station to get to Rockefeller Center for work, reached Manhattan by walking to an L train. He said the snafu turned what’s usually a 45 minute commute into a two-hour ordeal.
Hazards from the subway’s 160 miles of elevated tracks are well-known to New Yorkers who live near them. After a series of close calls where falling debris nearly injured or killed people, the MTA in 2019 allocated $325 million to install safety nets and baskets on all the subway’s elevated structures, a project that’s still ongoing.