The Sunday Record, December 10, 2000, North Jersey Section A year of not quite
rebuilding By Yung Kim, Staff Writer Bernice Baker of Hasbrouck Heights leaves her bedroom window cracked open to get fresh air, but every now and then she gets a whiff of burnt wood instead. Baker’s Hamilton Avenue home is just east of the former municipal building, which stands with its windows boarded up and no roof. The second floor of the 50-year-old building caught fire a year ago today, scattering administrative offices and the police and volunteer fire departments and sending memories up in smoke. In the wake of the borough’s loss, officials said the fire, caused by faulty wiring, brought the community together but created controversy over how to replace the building. "Our job is to respond to other people’s tragedies," said Police Chief Michael Colaneri. "It was so different to respond to our own." At the time of the fire, the town was reeling from a plane crash the previous day. A twin-engine plane headed to nearby Teterboro Airport crashed in a back yard off Central Avenue about 5 p.m., killing all four people on board. Although no residents lost their lives, the crash literally shook the entire neighborhood. The borough of about 12,000 found itself at the center of a swirl of federal and local investigators piecing together a cause for the crash. The next night, Fire Chief Vincent Monahan was in the western wing of the municipal building with other officials, evaluating the performance of emergency personnel. Just as the meeting was breaking up around 11 p.m., a firefighter looked out a window and saw flames. Police Capt. Robert Kroncke was looking over files in the basement when he saw smoke. He casually walked upstairs to the department’s offices on the first floor, thinking there was a problem with the boiler. "I remember that I told one of the cops we would need a fan," Kroncke said. "I thought we might have to leave the building to clear out the smoke." Upstairs at the main desk, he found the office full of smoke and heard the crackling of flames. He summoned the officers on duty and had them gather walkie-talkies and keys to the patrol cars. Police Chief Michael Colaneri, who lives about eight blocks from the municipal building, was finally getting some sleep after spending the previous night at the plane crash site. Two hours into his slumber his wife woke him. He put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and lumbered toward his front door with the intention of returning in an hour or two. "Then I looked out the front door and I saw the glow [from the fire]," Colaneri said. "I expected a computer up in smoke, but the second I got there I thought, ‘Oh my God.’" Firefighters were pulling fire trucks from the garage and immediately pumping water on the blaze. Eventually, more than 100 people from 19 towns arrived on the scene. After a failed attempt to attack the fire from inside the building, firefighters were forced to flood the inferno from outside. When the cupola collapsed about midnight, so did much hope for saving the building. "There was not a whole heck of a lot we could do," Monahan said. "Once the fire got started we surrounded it with water, but within 30 minutes, I knew." The frigid wind drove flames for more than five hours as the blaze ripped through the second floor and attic, the storage place for old paper documents. Anything that survived the flames was soaked by water. Instead of moping about their loss, workers immediately began pulling together the local government, said Borough Administrator Michael Kronyak. "Everyone automatically showed up the next day [Saturday]," Kronyak said. "By Monday, if you needed a building permit or marriage license, you got it." Borough administrative offices moved into the old Franklin School gymnasium across the street. They set up tables beneath basketball hoops and had a bank of telephones installed. They scavenged what they could from the burned-out building, and even set up a mat to dry out payroll checks. Kronyak later leased a former First Union bank office on Boulevard, complete with teller stations equipped with bulletproof glass. The office is crowded with signs pointing in all directions to guide residents to various departments in the compact space. The fire department used a former car dealership on Terrace Road before moving back to its former headquarters in the western wing of the burned building. Steel garages were erected on the sides of the charred structure to house the firetrucks. The police relocated to a county emergency trailer across the street. Within a month, the department had moved into a temporary facility made up of four trailers pieced together. Parts salvaged from the old department are sprinkled throughout the new structure, including bulletproof glass at the main desk and some shelving units. A makeshift processing area and a crude holding cell are suitable for only temporary stays. Colaneri said the department needs more space, but the compact quarters has forced personnel to be closer. Replacing the old building has stirred controversy. The borough collected $4.5 million from its insurance company and won grants worth more than $700,000 for a new $9.7 million building. The proposed building would house borough administrators, Municipal Court, and the Police Department, as well as a senior center and a public library on Boulevard between Madison and Central avenues. However, the plan was scratched because it required forcing residents out of the neighborhood. Officials have developed a scaled-down version of the plan that would house administrators, the senior center, and the library on Boulevard. The Municipal Court and fire and police departments would be in a public safety complex to be built on the site of the former municipal building. The plan, which will be discussed at Tuesday’s municipal meeting, would cost more than $10 million, decentralize municipal services, and require the demolition of the old building, Kronyak said. Construction of facilities is at least a year away, but no matter what borough officials decide, Colaneri is convinced his officers and borough residents will find a way to deal with it. "Things have been settling down," Colaneri said. "If we can get through that [the fire], we can get through anything. The little things don’t seem that hard to get through anymore." ####
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