Fire Breaks out at Hook in Georgetown

A fire broke out at Hook in Georgetown this afternoon. DC firefighters have already extinguished the blaze and reported no injuries. According the DCfireems Twitter account, there is smoke and water damage to Hook’s sister restaurant, Tacklebox and the Saloun.

The Georgetowner tweeted earlier, “According to sources, Fire behind Tackle Box and Hook started from still lit cigarette butt… #georgetown DC.” The source of the fire has not been confirmed.

UPDATED:
According to Paulo Ordoveza, a photographer for We Love DC, when he arrived on the scene “DCFD was breaking the upstairs windows at Hook to let smoke out.” He spoke with some of the Hook and Tacklebox staff who said that the fire didn’t start in Hook, rather it started in the structure directly behind the restaurant. Both Tacklebox and Hook were damaged in the fire.

As of 1:40 PM, M street NW remains closed from the Key bridge down Wisconsin Avenue.

News, The Daily Feed

By Tom Bridge 2:19 pm22 Dec 2010

Serious Fire at Takoma Education Campus

‘DC Fire Department’
courtesy of ‘Gersemalina’

This morning, DC Fire/EMS responded to a fire at the Takoma Education Campus on Piney Branch Road, which is currently believed to have started near some roofing work that was going on during the break. As it is winter break, no students were currently in session, and what staff were present were successfully evacuated, but the facility has suffered extensive damage.

In a statement distributed to press, Safiya Simmons wrote that “DCPS has determined that students won’t be able to return in January and plans to relocate the kids to another school are underway. A meeting with Takoma parents will be scheduled and final plans will be announced next week.”

No firefighters were injured in putting out the three-alarm blaze.

News, The Daily Feed

By Tom Bridge 9:00 am30 Mar 2010

DC Fire/EMS/Police Communications Down For Five Hours

‘red white and blue’
courtesy of ‘willmeyer’

An electrical problem at the city’s Office of Unified Communications brought DC’s primary radio system for emergency responders to a halt on Monday night around 7:15pm. According to NBC4, system went down for about five hours, causing DC Fire/EMS and MPD to default back to their backup radios.

DC operates a trunked radio system for emergency responders, meaning that there is one master control facility for all the radio communications for the city. There are several transmission facilities, but it’s all routed through the computers near the big antenna cluster by McMillan Reservoir. The whole system went down due to a power problem, forcing responders to their backup radios. While there was confusion for a short while, the city’s policies for maintaining backup radio channels with Arlington and Montgomery County on the 800Mhz band allowed for an easy switch back to working communications centers. DC Fire/EMS set up a temporary command center at 6th and F St NW to coordinate extra assistance during the five hour outage.