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Ambulance Bursts into Flames Outside St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital

By DNAinfo Staff on November 10, 2010 2:14pm  | Updated on November 10, 2010 3:53pm

By Benjamin Fractenberg and Olivia Scheck

DNAinfo Staff

UPPER WEST SIDE – An empty ambulance being loaded onto a tow truck burst into flames outside St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital’s 59th Street emergency room Wednesday afternoon, terrifying onlookers who feared that oxygen tanks inside might explode.

No one was hurt, but the block was closed to traffic, said hospital spokesman Jeff Jabomowitz.

“There’s oxygen tanks in the back. We were concerned about that,” Jabomowitz said.

The hospital briefly stopped accepting people into its ER, employees said.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice evacuated its North Hall building next door to the hospital as a precaution.

“They rang the bell and said ‘everyone evacuate,’” John Jay employee Vincent Pizzuto said. When he saw the fire, “I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’”

A witness, Michael Vogel, said he was dropping off his girlfriend at John Jay and saw a tow truck driver getting ready to take the ambulance away. Smoke appeared from under the hood, and the driver doused it with a fire extinguisher. Then he lifted the hood and flames shot out.

“Before you knew it, it was engulfed in flames,” Vogel, 20, of Brooklyn, said. “It was scary. (The driver) was lucky. It happened so fast.”

The tow truck driver, who identified himself only as Louie, said, “It was going to a repair shop and it never made it.”

Louie remained at the scene while firefighters put out the fire, then loaded up the charred remains and hauled it away.

In a memo to students and staff, John Jay Chief Operating Officer Robert Pignatello said the ambulance caught fire at 1:10 p.m., accompanied by “a loud boom, high visible flames and quite a bit of smoke.”

North Hall was reopened at about 1:30 p.m., after fire officials said it was safe to return, Pignatello said.