Much of a Long Island firehouse was destroyed after going up in flames Christmas morning, leaving the chief in tears as he described the loss of two pumpers, a ladder truck, an ambulance and the volunteer department’s firefighting equipment.
A passing state trooper noticed the blaze at the unoccupied North Massapequa fire headquarters at 1000 N. Broadway just after 6 a.m. and called it in, Fire Chief Joe Pesale said.
“The first arrival was myself and my first lieutenant. Smoke was coming from the truck room,” Pesale said.
“The immediate response was to transmit our signal 10, which is for a working fire, alerting everybody as well as multiple departments coming with mutual aid — especially being that this is our firehouse and our apparatus is on fire,” the chief continued.
“We made an attempt to get the trucks out of the building. There were three small explosions which prevented us to,” he said.