March 8, 2020 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
Month xx–xx, 2019
LOCAL
CLASSIFIEDS
PAG E 11
PARTY
POLITICS WHEELS OF FIRE
Nightlife icon
running for
state Senate
BY ROSE ADAMS
A 1980s nightlife icon who
managed the disco featured in
“Saturday Night Fever” is running
for state Senate in southern
Brooklyn, telling voters he
wants to paint the town red!
“Over the last few years,
Brooklyn has changed for
worse,” said Vito Bruno, a conservative
Bay Ridgite running
against Democratic incumbent
Andrew Gounardes in the November
elections. “I came into
this race to save our community.”
Bruno, a Bensonhurst native,
got his start at age 19 when
he landed a job at Bay Ridge’s
famed 2001 Odyssey club while
studying architecture at Pratt
Institute. He then opened an
after-hours club called AM/PM
in Tribeca in 1980, which drew
stars like Robert De Niro, Dan
Ackroyd, and Andy Warhol.
Massive inferno engulfs double-decker tour bus in Gowanus
Workers narrowly escape scaffolding collapse in W’burg
BY TODD MAISEL
Three workers escaped a potentially
deadly scaffolding collapse
with only minor injuries
in Williamsburg Feb. 27, according
to firefighters.
“These guys are awfully
lucky, that was a lot of debris
from those scaffolding,” said
one smoke eater.
The collapse occurred at a
six-story construction site on
A fi re engulfed a tour bus in Gowanus on March 2. Photo by Todd Maisel
Grand Street between Lorimer
Street and Union Avenue at
about 3 pm. Workers were laboring
from the roof of a neighboring
building, when Thursday’s
high winds toppled the
scaffolding supports, fire officials
said.
Firefighters raced to the
scene to find tons of wood and
metal tangled on the three
story adjoining roof and strewn
across a rear courtyard below,
but the debris did not bury the
three workers caught in the collapse,
and rescuers were able to
provide immediate assistance,
authorities say.
Paramedics ferried the workers
from Global Construction
to the hospital, and supervisors
on the scene said, “Thank God
they will be okay,” while declining
further comment.
Continued on page 10
BY TODD MAISEL
A double-decker bus erupted
into fl ames in a Gowanus storage
yard on March 2, fi ling the
skies with massive plumes of
black smoke.
Nearly 50 smoke eaters
rushed to the scene near Second
Avenue and Seventh Street,
where fi refi ghters declared an
“all-hands” response at around
10:45 am, authorities said.
Traffi c along the nearby
throughways was completely
blocked by fi re trucks as New
York’s Bravest worked to quash
the fl ames — which engulfed the
entire bus.
No injuries were reported,
and offi cials could not comment
on the cause of the fi re.
The owners of the storage
yard were not immediately available
for comment.
Workers suffered only minor injuries in the collapse. Photo by Todd Maisel
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