Queens All-Hands Fire on 103rd Avenue Knocked Down in Under an Hour — Searches Negative, No Patients, FDNY Says

The call came in as a phone alarm at 2:00 PM Friday: a fire in a private dwelling at 125-02 103rd Avenue in South Richmond Hill, Queens, FDNY Box 6077. Three minutes later the department transmitted a 10-75 — a working fire. At 2:07 PM, Battalion 51 reported water on the fire and transmitted All-Hands, bringing the full first-alarm assignment to a first-floor fire in a two-story private dwelling. Engines 298, 307 and 312 worked the fire with Ladder 155 as the FAST truck, under Battalion 51 and Division 13.

The fire's arc after that was short. At 2:13 PM, Division 13 reported the fire knocked down, with primary searches of the dwelling negative — no one found inside — and conditions described as doubtful while crews checked for extension. At 2:17 PM the incident was reported probably will hold, and at 2:47 PM the fire was declared secured. At securing, the department reported no patients: no resident, firefighter or bystander was reported injured in the incident file read by this desk, and no death has been confirmed by any official source.

What the file does not yet carry is a cause, and this desk does not supply one. The Fire Department's record, as read this cycle, ends at the securing of the fire; any determination by fire marshals files in a later cycle. The afternoon's second Queens fire call — a reported bus fire at a Grand Avenue bus depot at 2:49 PM — was downgraded within minutes with units releasing, and was not a structure fire; it is recorded here so the beat's record is complete, not as a second story.

The 103rd Avenue fire is the kind of call the beat exists to catch whole: a working fire in an occupied residential block, answered at All-Hands strength, and closed inside the hour with the searches negative. On a week when this city's fire file has carried the Sunset Park and Crown Heights fires, an afternoon that ends with no patients is the outcome the department works for.