How City Hall Nearly Burned Down the Bronx  Firefighting is more
than fancy hats and ladder trucks - there's both a science and
an art to it. Joe Flood's The Fires shows how New York's Bravest
take out a blaze from the top down.  Just after eight-thirty in
the morning on August 2, 1978, a small fire broke out on the
mezzanine level of a busy Waldbaum's supermarket in the
Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of southern Brooklyn. "I saw flames
coming from a large wooden beam right next to the men's room
wall," said plumber Arthur Stanley, who was part of a
construction crew adding an extension to the mezzanine. "I told
somebody to tell the store manager and then I hooked up this
garden hose I keep in my tool kit, and tried to put it out."
Store managers delayed calling the fire department and
evacuating customers from the market, but when the flames spread
to a storage room they relented, and employees had to convince
reluctant customers to leave their carts and exit the store. At
8:39, the call came in to the fire dep