A Hamilton Hill market that had once been a lightning rod for drug dealing and violence but had improved in recent years was destroyed by fire Friday as firefighters were forced to only watch.
Wires weighed down by the overnight ice storm snapped just before 1 p.m., setting Tony’s Market ablaze. Firefighters arrived a short time later, but the live wires and aluminum siding made fighting it impossible, Schenectady Fire Chief Robert Farstad said.
“When that building is charged, it’s an electrical hazard. You touch it, you get killed,” Farstad said Friday afternoon as smoke and steam still hovered over Emmett Street. “Unfortunately, we had to sit there and watch it burn.”
Firefighters only started dousing the flames after National Grid workers cut power to the area about 30 minutes after the report of fire. By then, it was too late.
Fire engulfed the building at Emmett and Steuben streets, flames shooting from almost every window. Firefighters poured water on the blaze from the street, but the water became steam immediately.
No injuries were reported. Firefighters had gotten word that someone was in the upstairs area, Farstad said, but that person’s car was gone, suggesting that they had left.
The fire didn’t stop until the building was in ruins.
Across the street from the market is the home of Chonda Workman and her family. They had just finished a late breakfast on the chilly and icy day when they heard the first boom.
They all jumped, and her younger children were crying — the side of Tony’s Market was on fire.
Workman said she ran to a National Grid worker nearby, who called in the fire. She also saw the market’s owner escape out the front.
“It kept going off like fireworks,” Workman said, “boom, boom, boom — the whole side of the building was just on fire.
“I was trying to keep the young ones calm and keep them settled,” the mother of four said, “telling them everything will be OK.”
Workman spoke on Emmett Street about a block from the scene. She and her family got out unharmed. There was momentary confusion in the smoke and steam that the fire might have spread, possibly to their home, but it had not.
With Tony’s Market in flames, Farstad said, firefighters turned their attention to nearby structures, saving them.
earlier call
There was confusion over when the first calls were made for the damaged wires.
After Farstad addressed the media on Emmett Street, Michelle Althiser and her family caught his attention, telling the chief of a call they made just before 1:30 a.m. for downed wires on Steuben Street.
They believed that their call went unanswered and the wires were what eventually caught Tony’s Market on fire 12 hours later.
Farstad said his firefighters responded to the calls they got, but he told them he would look into it.
Althiser had been staying with her sister the night before. She showed her cellphone with its record of a call at 1:23 a.m.
“Nobody came here to turn those wires off, and now this building is down,” she said.
Tony’s Market, she said, was a place to go in the neighborhood when something was needed.
“He was pretty decent to everybody,” she said.
Friday’s blaze marked a quick end to a business that officials had once tried to shut down. The area of the market was the scene of the Jan. 27, 2002, slaying of Leonder Goodwin. The area was also known for drug activity.
But with the advent of a surveillance camera project in the city in 2004, the market’s bad reputation diminished.
Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney said they had always felt bad about trying to close it. It wasn’t the market causing the problem; it was the people in front of it.
He also noted that it was one of the few places where people in the area could walk to to purchase items.
But the market would become the camera program’s biggest success, said Carney, who launched the program.
With a camera aimed there, calls for police dropped 97 percent from 2004 until 2007.
“It’s a shame,” Carney said. “At one time, it was a criminal hot spot. It was one of the successes of the camera project.”
GAZETTE COVERAGE
Ensure access to everything we do, today and every day, check out our subscribe page at DailyGazette.com/SubscribeMore from The Daily Gazette:
Categories: Uncategorized
