BY BEN BRACHFELD
On Thursday, Sept. 16, fi refi
ghters responded to yet another
blaze on an industrial
East Flatbush block that has
seen a striking number of fi res
over the past fi ve years.
New York’s bravest responded
to the confl agration at
S&A Scrap Iron & Metal on Preston
Ct at 3:20 pm that afternoon.
The inferno, which eventually
went to three alarms, required
about 138 FDNY personnel with
33 units to respond, a department
rep said. Firefi ghters battled
the blaze for over two hours
until it was fi nally under control.
One fi refi ghter was taken
to Kings County Hospital with
minor injuries.
Reached for comment,
S&A’s owner, Salvatore Vallario,
62, said that there were
no injuries to staff nor damage
to any property. He said that
the fi re was caused by an electric
scooter battery concealed
in the scrap pile, inside a 50-
yard open container outdoors
“They’re very dangerous.
We actually scour the loads for
them,” Vallario said. “But we
bring in a lot of tonnage of material,
it’s hard to go through
every piece. It’s almost like
Border Control. So we search
and try hard, but we missed
this piece, and one thing led
to the next, unfortunately. It
didn’t look pretty but there
was no damage and no one
was hurt. We just created a little
pollution for a while, we’ll
atone for our sins for that.”
Vallario said that if not disposed
of properly, the batteries
can be extremely dangerous,
going so far as to compare them
to a “hand grenade.” “These
batteries really should have a
warning,” Vallario said.
Preston Court, a threeblock
street lined with junkyards
and warehouses just
north of Foster Avnuee, on the
border between Canarsie and
East Flatbush, has been the
site of a litany of fi res in the
past fi ve years. “Preston Ct”
has been mentioned 21 times in
relation to 11 distinct incidents
on the FDNYalerts Twitter account
since July 2016, almost
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all concentrated on a single
block stretch between East
56th Street and Ralph Avenue.
An FDNY spokesperson
did not immediately provide a
hard number of fi res that have
occurred on the stretch since
2016. The last fi re on Preston
Court took place just six weeks
ago, on Aug. 2. Despite that, Vallario
said that this was his fi rst
fi re in 32 years of owning S&A,
and that the constant fi res are
coming from his neighbor, the
much larger junkyard Brooklyn
Resource Recovery.
“They shred automobiles,
they have a machine that pulverizes
automobiles,” Vallario
said. “When you shred an automobile,
automobiles contain
gasoline, plastic, batteries, everything
there is fl ammable.
So the fl uff, car seats, dashboards,
get separated in a separate
pile. Then what happens
is spontaneous combustion,
because of all the heat, it occurs,
it’s been going on for 15
years they’ve been there. It’s
the nature of the beast.”
He said that the amount of
A fi refi ghter at the site of an East Flatbush junkyard fi re on Sept. 16.
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
pollution emitted from the row
of body shops, warehouses, and
junkyards, whether during
a fi re or regular business, is
being left uncontrolled by the
city, and said the city should
put together a task force to try
to solve the problem.
The Aug. 2 fi re took place
at Brooklyn Resource, he said,
and in the frequent event that
a fi re breaks out, the FDNY
usually has to use his property
to put out the fi re next
door, because of access issues
in the neighboring junkyard.
“Usually, they come to my
property to fi ght the fi re next
door, because they can’t get any
access,” Vallario said. “They
come to my yard and shut my
business down for half a day.”
Brooklyn Resource has
long had a tense relationship
with the surrounding community,
owing to what locals say
are toxic and fl ammable materials
being shredded there, releasing
noxious fumes into the
atmosphere whenever there’s a
fi re. In 2017, activists and local
politicians petitioned the MTA
to put the kibosh on Brooklyn
Resource’s activities, claiming
that the Authority at least partially
owns the land the junkyard
sits on, which is right
next to Long Island Rail Road
tracks. The MTA claimed no
ownership over the lot.
Brooklyn Resource declined
to comment.
Another fi re on blazing East
Flatbush junkyard block
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