Oct. 17 is a sad day for the New York Fire Department. Monday is the 50th anniversary of the fire that, until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, claimed more firefighters’ lives than any other disaster in the city.
The short trip that the firefighters made from nearby firehouses on Oct. 17, 1966, started around 9:30 p.m. when they headed to a fire at a building on East 22nd Street, just east of Broadway.
Despite the heat and smoke they encountered, firefighters who were there said the source of the blaze — its “seat,” in firefighters’ parlance — had not been obvious. Several firefighters were sent around the block, to 23rd Street, and told to pull a hose through a drugstore there in an attempt to approach the fire from the rear. They went in, and never made it out.