{"id":2363,"date":"1963-10-08T14:30:00","date_gmt":"1963-10-08T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/?p=2363"},"modified":"2022-02-01T17:24:28","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T17:24:28","slug":"st-james-fd-fire-destroys-blue-jay-supermarket-on-lake-avenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/?p=2363","title":{"rendered":"St. James FD-Fire destroys Blue Jay Supermarket on Lake Avenue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

October 8, 1963 . Fire is reported at 1430 hours. Fire starts in the basement. 15 shoppers within the store at the time all safely evacuated. Two employees, Mike Mastrogiacomo and his brother Leonard entered the basement with extinguishers after noticing smoke coming up the staircase. They were reportedly driven back when 15-20 cases of matches lit up. Erhardt Olsen was Chief and OIC. Erhardt says that the fire was a result of an electrical short in the wiring to a basement freezer. The first floor collapsed during the fire. Five firefighters were injured.Store manager Robert L\u2019Hommedieu estimated that the loss to the building and stock was $100,000. This was one of 7 Blue Jay stores in the chain. The old wood framed building was purchased and renovated in 1953. It was also a market prior to 1953. There were vacant apartments above the store at the time of the fire. St. James, Smithtown, Nesconset, Kings Park and Stony Brook fought the fire. Firefighters injured in the blaze included Harry Dwyer, Dennis Casey, Rich Blake, Andrew Rigoli and Ed Dusek of St. James and William Pike of Nesconset. Dr. Fredrick Fischler set up a first aid station at the scene along with nurse Betty Schmidt to treat the injured firefighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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October 8, 1963 . Fire is reported at 1430 hours. Fire starts in the basement. 15 shoppers within the store at the time all safely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-county-wide","category-smithtowntwp","category-smithtown-twp-historical","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2381,"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363\/revisions\/2381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.suburbanfiremarshal.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}