Three-alarm fire rips through roof of Breezy Point church day before Easter
More than 100 firefighters and EMS medics responded to a blaze that started around 2 p.m. at St. Edmund Church near Rockaway Point Blvd. in Breezy Point. The fire burned through the roof of the church, FDNY said.
Two firefighters suffered minor injuries in the incident as the fire was placed under control at 3:30 p.m.
It remained unclear what sparked the blaze as FDNY personnel are still investigating.
Tom Fox, the former CEO of New Water Taxi and an early planner of Hudson River Park in Manhattan, and his wife, Gretchen Ferenz Fox — an agnostic couple — live six blocks from the church. Ferenz Fox noted St. Edmund is the second-largest of three Catholic churches in the idyllic beachside enclave, which also boasts a Unitarian church. The house of worship had all-new brown shingle siding added after Hurricane Sandy, she noted.
Fox said the small community boasts three volunteer fire departments, adding, 'They were first on the scene, for sure.'
'It will be devastating to the community,' Fox said. 'But we are resilient, so we will pull together.'
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Atlantic
15 hours ago
- Atlantic
‘We're Trying to Do the Best We Can Before We Die'
George Anton is hungry, but he's become used to the sensation—the urgent, aching feeling in his stomach, the heaviness of his limbs. He hardly has time to acknowledge the discomfort, given all the work he has to do. He is the operations manager for an aid-distribution program operating through the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City, the sole remaining Catholic church in Gaza. Anton lives at the church in a single room that he shares with his wife and three daughters. Four hundred people are sheltering there, he told me; it was once a sanctuary from the war. Recently, however, the fighting has come to encircle it. An Israeli tank shell struck the church early last month, killing three people there, according to a statement by the patriarchate. This week, daily pauses in the fighting have calmed the neighborhood somewhat, but not enough for the church to resume aid programs: food hampers, a communal laundry, psychosocial support programs and clinics. Some of these functioned even before the current war. But these days, the church has nothing to distribute. Its food pantry is empty, and supplies have run out. When I reached Anton by phone on Wednesday, he was busy looking for a way to bring more food to the church's pantry. Anton is one of hundreds of Gazan aid workers—affiliated with religious, international, and local organizations—who are trying to find and distribute supplies to keep others alive. Complicating their work is their own hunger and exhaustion, as well as the paucity of food coming into the territory altogether. An alert on Tuesday from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an organization made up of United Nations agencies and aid groups, noted that the 'latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.' The people sheltering at the church have, in the absence of communal supplies, begun to ration their own small stashes of food items, mostly gathered from the markets when the situation was stable enough for them to venture out. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has become the official mechanism for dispensing food aid, has very few distribution points, all in areas far from the church. Many Gazans fear visiting these sites: According to the UN, more than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces while seeking assistance from GHF, the UN, and other aid convoys. (GHF has called these numbers 'false and exaggerated statistics.') I spoke with one Palestinian aid worker who did try to get food from GHF. In early June, Youssef Alwikhery, an occupational therapist with Medical Aid for Palestinians, hadn't eaten for close to a week. Several of his brothers, uncles, and cousins had tried to get food from GHF before—30 attempts altogether, he estimated—but only one had succeeded in bringing a box back. So Alwikhery rose one morning at 3 a.m. and made his way to Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza, a main thoroughfare leading to a distribution point that was a little over a mile from his home. He saw thousands of people. Some started running toward the distribution point, and he ran too. 'It was like a game, like a death game,' he told me. Soon came the sound of shots and explosions. Alwikhery turned back. 'It's not help. It's like Russian roulette,' he said. 'If you want to run, you might die, or you might get injured. You might get a box. This is the formula. This is the point.' Alwikhery now pays exorbitant prices for small amounts of food at the market, and he eats just one meal a day. He lives with his parents and his brothers' families, including 9- and 11-year-old children. They, too, eat only one meal a day, usually around four or five in the evening, and if a family member needs to cook, they burn whatever they can, because the price of fuel is high. One photo Alwikhery sent me shows his occupational-therapy textbook being used as kindling. I first met Alwikhery in the summer of 2022, at Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northernmost part of Gaza, when we worked with the same international medical organization. He specialized in helping patients with congenital disabilities carry out their daily activities. Israel ordered the closure of Al-Awda in May, and now Alwikhery works in Medical Aid for Palestinians' emergency clinic in central Gaza. He told me that he finds the state of his pediatric patients disturbing; he described children with cerebral palsy who couldn't move their bodies to do simple exercises because they were so calorically deprived. My call with Anton was at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, and so far that day, he told me, he had consumed nothing but coffee and tea. He rises early, at 6 a.m. The first thing he does is check to make sure the church's solar panels, water tanks, and piping are still functioning and did not sustain any damage overnight. Then he reads the news, goes to morning prayers, and calls his colleagues in Jerusalem for updates on when food trucks might reach Gaza and how they will be secured. Around 4 p.m. the day we spoke, his wife and three daughters, ages 9, 11, and 14, had shared one can of tuna with some bread. In recent weeks, his girls have taken to spending much of their time in the family's room, sleeping and reading to conserve their energy. The oldest and youngest used to enjoy soccer and basketball, but now they don't feel safe going out, and anyway, they're too tired. Anton told me he encourages them to pretend they're fasting, as though for Lent. Photos: Starvation and chaos in Gaza Sometimes, fellow aid workers or journalists tell Anton about families on the brink, and he gathers any extra supplies he can from the families sheltering in the church to deliver by foot. Recently, a journalist told him about a father of six who used a wheelchair and could not access income or aid. This man had no extended family nearby to share resources. Anton was able to gather only enough food to last the family approximately one week. When conditions were safe enough last Saturday, he delivered the food to the family's tent. The children, two boys and two girls, were 'really suffering,' he told me. 'They're like skeletons, you know.' Families such as that one, where one or more members have a disability, or whose kinship networks are small or nonexistent, are among those hardest hit by starvation, both Anton and Alwikhery told me. Anton's day would not finish after we spoke. He said he would try to find himself some bread later in the night. He and some other people sheltering at the church would stay up to monitor the hostilities in the neighborhood, tend to anyone needing help or comfort, and assist some of the elderly to use the communal bathrooms in the dark. 'We're trying to do the best we can before we die, you know,' he told me. 'Because I'm telling you, if this situation will last for a longer time, all of us will die hungry.'
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Indianapolis Star
a day ago
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Let Hoosier kids have summer. School shouldn't start in late July.
Hoosier kids shouldn't be in orientation and buying school clothes by late July. Alas, children will soon be back in the classrooms instead of finishing out a nice summer. Fair warning: I am entering grumpy, boomer territory. But it's not just my age. Even the younger members of the Indiana Capital Chronicle believe this has gotten out of control. 'September is how the Lord (and the harvest) intended,' a reporter quipped during a Slack conversation. Indeed, all of us remembered starting the academic year around Labor Day, and we grew up across at least six different states. In 2009, parents pushed the Indiana General Assembly to require a uniform start date, or at least one that was after Labor Day. There were hearings, but ultimately, local control was retained. The decision is left to individual districts. The Metropolitan School District of Warren Township in Indianapolis started July 24, for instance. Many others scheduled their returns for July 30, July 31 or Aug. 1. An IndyStar listing covering more than 30 Central Indiana districts or schools had Aug. 14 as the latest start date — but that was just one Catholic high school. The creep toward earlier starts began when educators saw learning loss from the long summer. And thus began the balanced calendar. But as far as I can tell from recent scores, students aren't doing any better in recent decades than they were before. Schools also say it's necessary to meet the state's 180-day instructional requirement. One parent at a 2009 legislative hearing counted the weekdays between the fourth Monday in August and the end of May, showing plenty of days available to meet the requirement without infringing on summer. 'Summertime is a magical time in a child's life,' he testified. 'Three months of fun. No responsibility.' Briggs: Indiana's school letter grades will help housing prices more than parents Instead, schools have largely redistributed time out of the classroom, adding weeklong fall breaks, additional days in December and other small breaks. Others have argued that utility costs are higher in August, and that kids going back early impacts tourism activities that rely on youth workers. It's not just Indiana, though. Pew Research Center found in a 2023 analysis that some students start in late July, with many back by mid-August. There are differences across geographic regions. Schools tend to start earlier in southern regions than farther north, broadly speaking. Here is what Pew found: Briggs: The IPS-charter school fight puts politics over children Indiana falls into the East North Central region, with the majority starting in mid-August. I think it's time to re-evaluate the school calendars with an eye toward starting later. Some of my concern is absolutely nostalgia. But I also don't think the shift has netted students and parents anything of value.
