#fire-department — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #fire-department, aggregated by home.social.
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The Failed City: I Wrote a Book About What We Bury
I have been staring at a patch of asphalt in Jersey City for thirteen years. That is not a figure of speech. I mean that in late September 2013, I watched a road crew roll fresh blacktop over 150-year-old granite cobblestones on Baldwin Avenue in the Heights, and the image has not released me since. The cobblestones were ballast stones, carried across the Atlantic Ocean in the holds of empty cargo ships and dumped on American docks because the ships needed the weight for the crossing and needed to shed it to load American exports for the return trip. Those stones were repurposed as paving. They became streets. They outlasted the ships, the shipping companies, the trade routes, the empires that commissioned them. And in 2013, a man in a road roller buried them under asphalt because, as he told me with the patience of someone explaining gravity, cobblestones eat up tires.
That exchange is where the book starts. It is also where the book’s argument starts, because what happened on Baldwin Avenue is a precise physical enactment of a larger institutional habit: the preference for covering failure rather than studying it, for smoothing the surface rather than examining what lies beneath.
The Failed City: An Autopsy of Urban Collapse is now available from David Boles Books.
What the Book Does
The book conducts autopsies. Twenty of them, organized into five taxonomies of urban failure, spanning two millennia, three continents, and one diagnostic framework that I built to answer a question nobody in the urban planning literature seemed to be asking: why do we refuse to study the cities that died with the same rigor we bring to the cities that worked?
The five taxonomies are catastrophic erasure, economic exsanguination, the utopian misfire, slow municipal death, and the never-built city. Each describes a distinct mode of urban death. Each contains case studies drawn from published sources, government records, journalistic accounts, and in several cases my own observation. I have walked the streets described in this book. I have taught at the universities that serve them. The Jersey City Heights, Camden, Newark: these are places I know from the sidewalk, not from the satellite view.
Pompeii is in the book because it is the oldest and most complete case of catastrophic erasure in the Western record. Pripyat is in the book because it is the newest, a city of 49,000 people evacuated in thirty-six hours after Chernobyl and never reoccupied. Centralia, Pennsylvania, is in the book because the coal mine fire that started beneath it in 1962 is still burning, and because the state’s decision to bury Graffiti Highway under dirt is the most literal act of concealment I have encountered in any case study. Galveston is in the book because it was the largest city in Texas in 1900 and it is not anymore, and the reason it is not anymore is that Houston built a ship channel and absorbed Galveston’s port function, which meant that the hurricane that destroyed Galveston was fatal precisely because the economic function that would have justified rebuilding had already migrated fifty miles inland.
Gary, Indiana, is in the book because U.S. Steel built it in 1906 and then left. Cairo, Illinois, is in the book because its own governing class burned it down through a sustained campaign of racial violence so thorough that the city lost ninety percent of its population. Flint is in the book because the governance structure appointed to save money ended by poisoning the water. Pittsburgh is in the book because it did not die, and the reasons it survived expose the reasons the others did not.
Laurent, South Dakota, is in the book because it is the most instructive failure I have ever encountered. A planned Deaf community where more than a hundred families signed reservation forms and zero relocated. The idea was serious, the enthusiasm was real, and the distance between signing a form and packing a truck turned out to be the distance between a vision and a life. I have worked in the Deaf community for decades through HardcoreASL.com, ASL-Opera.com, and the CUNY-SPS ASL Program, and Janna Sweenie’s characterization of Laurent as a “Deaf Utopia” captures the arc perfectly: enthusiastic communal aspiration followed by collective inaction.
Where the Argument Came From
A colleague of mine at Rutgers-Newark, years ago, made a case for the publication of failure that I have carried forward as an intellectual commitment ever since. His field was research methodology, and his contention was that failed scholarship, research rigorously conducted that ended by disproving its own thesis, deserved publication with the same velocity and seriousness as research that confirmed its hypothesis. Journals published findings. Careers advanced on discoveries. The experiments that did not find what they were looking for were filed away, and the filing-away constituted a loss of the knowledge that the failure itself contained.
He was not a person I admired, and the reasons for that are his own business. But the argument he made that day was better than the person who made it. That fact is itself a version of the thesis this book advances: useful knowledge does not confine itself to attractive sources.
The Failed City applies that principle to urban collapse. Failed cities generate data. Abandoned plans produce evidence. Collapsed communities contain information about what went wrong, when it went wrong, and what the conditions were that made the failure possible. That data is as valuable as the data generated by the cities that succeeded. Our refusal to publish it, to study it, to assemble it into a systematic account, guarantees the repetition of errors that have already been committed and documented and then filed away.
The Diagnostic
The book builds a diagnostic framework with three levels: the baseline condition (what the city had before the crisis), the triggering condition (what initiated the decline), and the cascade (the self-reinforcing cycle that follows). The framework is offered as a tool. It works for every case study in the book, and I suspect it works for cases the book does not examine. The Prairie Voice article I published alongside this book, “The Other Side of the Blacktop,” argues that the same framework applies to rural collapse with equal precision. Any rancher in western Kansas who has watched the feedlot close and the equipment dealer follow it and the diner follow that can diagram the cascade on a napkin.
Jane Jacobs and the Missing Half
Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961. The title promises a study of death and life. The book delivers overwhelmingly on the life. It is one of the great books of the twentieth century, and I assign it in every course I teach that touches urban questions. It is also a book that does not deliver on the first word of its own title. Jacobs studied what makes cities work. She did not study what makes them die.
The Failed City is the death half of the equation, the book that Jacobs’ title promises and her text does not deliver. Jacobs remains one of the great urbanists. The gap in the literature remains real. No comparable book exists. The field has single-city studies (Sugrue on Detroit, Gillette on Camden, Gordon on St. Louis) and academic shrinking-cities literature, but no cross-taxonomic diagnostic framework for a general readership. The Failed City is, as far as I have been able to determine, the first.
The Cobblestones
The cobblestones are still there. Under the asphalt on Baldwin Avenue, under the dirt that covers Graffiti Highway in Centralia, under the grass that grows over the graded roads of California City. The evidence of failure is more durable than the surfaces we lay on top of it. Asphalt cracks. Dirt erodes. Grass thins. And the substrate will still be there, waiting to be examined by anyone willing to look at what lies beneath the blacktop.
The answer is beneath the blacktop. It has been there the whole time.
#bolesBooks #book #camden #city #cityLife #cobblestones #davidBoles #diagnostic #failedCity #failures #fireDepartment #janeJacobs #jerseyCity #newJersey #photography #technology #university #writing -
Fire Department in Owego, NY
#photo #photography #architecture #buildings #owego #upstateny #firedepartment #firstresponders
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In 1919, records show Manuel “Cy” Saenz receiving $10 or $252 (adjusted) monthly to store the City’s fire truck in his garage at Ince and Washington Blvd. Volunteers fought fires during this time and one involving the then-Mayor's garage led to the start of the #FireDepartment. #photography #americana #wa #california #architecture #californication #culvercity #colorphotography #blackandwhitephotography #travel #trivia
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Woman accused of arson following fire in Spring Garden Township https://www.allforgardening.com/1561642/woman-accused-of-arson-following-fire-in-spring-garden-township/ #Arson #Basement #day #Document #fire #FireDepartment #garden #HeatGun #home #InjuredFirefighter #KathrynFrankel #NewYear #OgontzStreet #police #SeveralPeople #SpringGardenTownship
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Car crashes into front of food mart in Spartanburg County
SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. (FOX Carolina) – The Hilltop Fire Department said they responded after a car crashed into the front of a food mart. The crash happened at the Presto Food Mart on Asheville Highway, according to the fire department. Crews re…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Food #ashevillehighway #crash #FireDepartment #prestofoodmart
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2415528/car-crashes-into-front-of-food-mart-in-spartanburg-county/ -
Car crashes into front of food mart in Spartanburg County https://www.diningandcooking.com/2415528/car-crashes-into-front-of-food-mart-in-spartanburg-county/ #AshevilleHighway #crash #FireDepartment #food #PrestoFoodMart
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We are launching a long-term #researchcollaboration with the #Munich #FireDepartment! The focus is on practical topics such as firefighting for #LithiumIonBatteries, operational tactics, and resource-efficient #FireSafety: http://go.tum.de/770211 🚒
📷J. Höller
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About half of Dems voted with the fascists, falsely linking communism with democratic socialism. There are no moderate Democrats, they're all conservative. The only liberal democrats are AOC/ Bernie, a handful.
#socialist #USA: #public #schools #roads #hospitals, the #FireDepartment #PoliceDepartment #libraries #beaches = #Socialism #PostOffice #SocialSecurity #Medicare #DemocraticSocialism #Europe & #Nordic #countries are #DemocraticSocialist #EatTheRich #PresidentMusk
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-of-democrats-voting-to-condemn-socialism-as-mamdani-comes-to-town-11088383 -
I am curious if you or or a fire department you work with still uses paper box books? #GIS #Greysky #FireDepartment #PublicSafety
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After a year of testing, our university’s #firedepartment at the #Garching campus shows that #electric #firetrucks are not only feasible but reliable, cutting emissions and noise in daily operations: http://go.tum.de/362073 🚒
📷TUM Werkfeuerwehr
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If a #Company #Building is on #Fire, so already fully engulfed in flames but with every #Employee accounted for, and you're going to the #GasStation for a canister of 10 gallons #Diesel and then throw it in the burning building like an #Olympic hammer thrower right in front of the #Police and #FireDepartment without endangering someone — that isn't #Arson, right?
Right? -
Cooking fire at Olathe home displaces four residents
OLATHE, Kan. — Multiple people were displaced from their from home after a fire in Olathe on Monday evening. The Olathe Fire Department reports around 8:20 p.m., a cooking fire displaced four residents and caused thousands of dollars in damage in west Olathe, near R…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Cooking #FireDepartment #Olathe #OlatheFireDepartment
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2239566/cooking-fire-at-olathe-home-displaces-four-residents/ -
Spent last weekend climbing near Wellheim, Bavaria, with the impressive “Dohlenfelsen” visible in the background. Got lucky and stumbled upon the 150th-anniversary celebration of the local volunteer fire department! This vintage firetruck from 1982 was on display for the occasion. A classic, likely an American-made Mack CF model.
#climbing #nature #bavaria #firedepartment #firetruck #vintagevehicles
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I cannot stand private equity.
I cannot stand this unencumbered merging of companies and mass-consolidation and anti-trust completely forgotten.
I cannot stand this race to the bottom.
I cannot stand how it's happening in EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRY, SIMULTANEOUSLY.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl1eJmw295g
#FireDepartment #FireTrucks -
Exciting walkies today.
I got to call 911 for a truck that caught on fire and exploded a few times. It was not the giant fireball with someone slowly running away... just explosions under the hood.
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Made rice krispies treats for the volunteer fire department in town. As it turned out, their Gamewell Diaphone (nicknamed the Moose) started sounding as I typed this message ... and now the engine sirens are going, too. #cooking #dessert #swarthmore #FireDepartment
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Bayer Executive's Home Set On Fire: A Pattern Emerges After UnitedHealthcare CEO's Death
#arson #Bayer #FBI #Fire #Firedepartment #firefighters #FreeLuigi #Luigi #LuigiMangione #Madison #newjersey #news #Police #unitedhealth #UnitedHealthcare
https://theaegisalliance.com/2025/03/16/bayer-executives-home-set-on-fire-a-pattern-emerges-after-unitedhealthcare-ceos-death/?fsp_sid=1225 -
VINTAGE POSTCARD Sappers Firemen Fire department interior off engine Chicago house
https://www.cpaphil.com/en/categories/firemen-1/pages/4
#Sappers #Firemen #FireDepartment #Chicago #VintagePostcard #History #Heritage #VintageArt #Memory
#HistoricalPostcard #Firefighters #ArtisticDesign #VintageArt -
Ohio Bus Driver Hailed as Hero for Saving 15 Students from Burning School Bus
#buses #ClevelandHeights #Firedepartment #firefighters #fires #news #Ohio #USnews
https://theaegisalliance.com/2025/02/27/ohio-bus-driver-hailed-as-hero-for-saving-15-students-from-burning-school-bus/?fsp_sid=647 -
When I rode to my house yesterday in the afternoon I felt the energy in the street was not right
That was when I was 20 minutes out
At three 🕞 minutes distance I was absolutely certain that a lot was wrong, and I wasn't surprised when I saw the fire trucks close to the houses 🏠 in between the tax office and the brick street.
A massive fire 🔥 which started in an abandoned building {which burned to the ground} hit an apartment building with about 16 units, then raged through a wooden house where an acquaintance of mine lives, levelling that house in minutes. While the fire 🔥 was burning the wooden one story house was also charring the house beside it.
The fire department had experience with a massive fire in my street more than a decade ago, came with everything {twelve trucks including tankers} and they came fast.
Everyone who was living in the apartment building evacuated safely. A woman ♀️ who I know well confirmed that fact.
However my acquaintance was already intoxicated by the fumes and refused to leave the house thinking that the rescue team from the fire department were robbers!
He was standing with a shotgun ready, didn't point it at them, but refused to leave.
The rescue team was forced to leave him behind and he fell unconscious. When they heard the thump of his corpus hitting the wooden floor, they grabbed him and rushed him to hospital, where he succumbed to the smoke inhalation.So the abandoned building ignited the apartment building which ignited the wooden house which charred the building beside it. In total three buildings burned, two charred and One person suffocated in the ER. The fire was under control within a very reasonable time, given the fact that my fire department does not have the equipment they need to get every year.
My sincerest Thanks goes to the fire rescue team, because without them the whole block would have burned down...
🌺💜🎼 🎶 🎸 #Lobi ✨ 💖💕🌹💐💖 💙💜💖🦋
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Three firefighters were injured while battling an apartment complex fire in southeast Houston early Tuesday morning.
#Houston #Local #News #FireDepartment #HoustonFire #HoustonFireDepartment #SoutheastHouston
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(Sorry, let me try this again.)
Driving up I26 north from Saluda towards #Asheville we passed and later were passed by a large open truck from the Charlotte Fire Department. It wasn't until we were next to it that I saw the back was completely packed full of kids' bicycles and helmets!
They are clearly bringing them to our area, to hand out to children who have lost a lot due to #Helen, and what an incredibly nice thing to do.
They passed us on the way, so I finally got some pictures, but it was a construction area so I didn't honk and wave. Thank you, #CharlotteFD!!