In New York City, the annual Grucci fireworks take place every July 4 on the East River in Manhattan. If you have friends in high places, that is an apartment overlooking the East River, it's an incredible spectacle, if you don't mind gridlock afterwards.

The other events that include fireworks in the City, are the Concerts in the Parks Series, sponsored by the Parks Department and the New York Philharmonic that take place in various parks throughout the summer. The Grucci family does a mini version of what they do on the Fourth, following the concerts.

Legal fireworks sponsored by the NYC Parks Dept. Van Cortlandt Part, 1997 (c) 1997 Susan B. Markisz

In 1996, I decided to do a little story on this unofficial gathering, which the publisher turned into an editorial. I wondered why Riverdale's powerful community organizations didn't organize our own event. Because there were many individuals setting off a multitude of explosive devices, people were at risk of injury, especially unsupervised children, and anyway, who wanted to spend hours in traffic when we could have our own legal fireworks display here in Riverdale?

It actually was always kind of fun, the loud M80's notwithstanding. Kids with sparklers and an occasional Roman candle yielded some nice pictures, but the nicest thing was reconnecting with friends and neighbors. The police and fire department always showed up to watch and make sure everthing was ok, but they never intervened or put a stop to the proceedings, that is, until last year.

Illegal fireworks 1996 Seton Park (c) Susan B. Markisz/The Riverdale Press

Fireworks 1995 (c) Susan B. Markisz/The Riverdale Press

Now, I can't take credit for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's crackdown on illegal fireworks but last year I was out of town on the 4th and one of our other photographers said that nary a soul was in sight in Seton or any other park. Not even a kid with a sparkler.

So, I was not looking forward to tonight's assignment, which was to look for art that wasn't going to be there. After I returned from a family dinner, I drove around every park in Riverdale & Kingsbridge: Van Cortlandt, Seton, Henry Hudson, Vinmont Veterans,...it was eerily quiet and you couldn't even hear fireworks in the distance. It seemed positively un American to hear nothing at all on the Fourth of July...

Captain Leonard Sarter, C.O. at the 50th Precinct, had been patrolling the neighborhood. He had discovered smoke coming from the roof of the house, got the residents out, called 911 and in the interim, took out the residents' garden hose to try and contain the fire, which unfortunately spread rapidly because the house was over 70 years old with asbestos-covered wood shingles on the roof. Everyone got out safely, but the roof was completely destroyed. I stopped counting at eight engines. There was additional concern because of the proximity of the house to a school next door.

The fire was declared suspicious. By 11 pm, one of the Fire Marshalls had found an an illegal explosive called a 4 oz. bottle rocket, which had landed on the roof of the house. The Supervising Fire Marshall would neither confirm nor deny these facts to me, even though he had already declared the cause of the fire and a police officer was holding the device in full view of me and my camera, explaining to me exactly what it was. The Fire Marshall asked me if I was "only the photographer..." explained that he couldn't talk to the Press anyway, but that if I called him back before 1:30 am, he'd give me a Public Information phone number to call.

An officer at the Five-O , I learned, had taken someone into custody moments before the house went up, in a schoolyard behind the house. At 1 am, I called the Fire Marshall, who told me that an arrest had been made, that the cause was a device called a bottlerocket and that any further information would have to come from the precinct.

The most incredible thing to the officers and the firefighters on the scene was that the Precinct Captain had discovered the fire while on patrol. "This is a story for the ages," said one officer on duty. "You don't find many captains out patrolling the neighborhood," he said. "And this might have had a very different ending had this happened at 1 or 2 in the morning."