BREAKING: Nearly 270 firefighters and EMS personnel are battling a five-alarm fire that has ripped through the First Reformed Church of Astoria in Queens, one of the oldest places of worship in New York City, after flames spread from an attached residence and broke through the church’s roof on Thursday evening.
The Fire Department of New York confirmed the first emergency call came in at 6.46pm local time, to an address on 12th Street between 27th Avenue and Main Avenue, close to the historic 19th-century church building. What began as a fire at a rectory or residence attached to the church rapidly escalated: by 7.57pm the blaze had been upgraded to a fifth alarm, the FDNY’s highest routine classification for a major structural fire, according to Gothamist.
In total, 84 units and approximately 270 firefighters and EMS personnel have been deployed to the scene, with CBS News earlier reporting the deployment at close to 200. Aerial footage from Chopper 2 showed intense flames shooting out of the church’s roof, and photographs released by the FDNY captured Ladder 117 being used from above to attack the fire from the exterior.
Heavy smoke drifted across a wide swathe of Astoria as the fire took hold. The NYC Office of Emergency Management issued a public advisory via Notify NYC urging residents in the vicinity to close their windows and avoid smoke exposure. Witnesses described the smoke as having “engulfed the neighborhood as far as Broadway”, with one local noting the intense activity on 12th Street between Astoria Boulevard and 27th Avenue.
There has so far been no official word on casualties. The FDNY has not yet commented on the cause of the fire, and it remains unclear what damage has been sustained to the interior of the church or whether the structure can be saved. Operations are ongoing.
A loss that would ripple through Astoria
The scale of any permanent damage will matter well beyond the immediate emergency. The First Reformed Church of Astoria was founded in 1839, placing it among the oldest religious congregations in New York City and giving it a place in the civic history of Queens that long predates the borough’s consolidation into the modern five-borough city in 1898. The congregation has been woven into the fabric of Astoria for almost two centuries, and the church building itself is regarded locally as one of the neighbourhood’s defining historic landmarks.
Fires of this magnitude at historic houses of worship have, in recent years, produced a particular kind of public shock, whether at Notre-Dame in Paris in 2019, at London’s Crooked House pub fire in 2023, or in the destruction of older American wooden churches whose timber construction allows flames to spread with devastating speed. Firefighters on Thursday night faced precisely that challenge: the rapid passage of fire from an attached dwelling into the sanctuary, followed by involvement of the roof — the point at which containing a blaze of this kind becomes dramatically harder.
What happens next
FDNY operations are continuing as of the most recent updates, with the fifth-alarm classification indicating a sustained, major commitment of resources. Investigators from the fire marshal’s office are likely to begin work on the cause once the fire is brought under control, and attention will turn to any injuries among emergency responders or residents of the attached property. Transit and road closures in the immediate area are expected to remain in place overnight.
The situation is fast-moving, and this article will be updated as further information becomes available. For now, nearly two centuries of Astoria history are in the hands of the 270 emergency personnel on 12th Street.
