Above: Raw video from a fire at a yeshiva in Kiamesha Lake from the Times Herald-Record.
On the evening of Thursday, March 15, a massive fire broke out in the dormitory of a boys' yeshiva (a Jewish religious school) in Kiamesha Lake near Monticello. The yeshiva building is the former Gibber Hotel, in the town of Thompson.
The blaze drew firefighters from all over Sullivan County and neighboring Orange County, the Times Herald-Record reports:
Roughly 125 firefighters from 19 Sullivan and Orange County departments were called to the scene just after 7:06 p.m. when the Sullivan County Sheriff's Office was notified by 911. County fire investigators will return to the scene Friday. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The fire burned for hours, Mid-Hudson News reports, but by a stroke of luck, no one was injured:
The campus was unoccupied as the students were paying a condolence call in Rockland County.
Firefighters had difficulty fighting the fire because of the narrow roads leading to the old hotel building, water pressure problems, the need for additional manpower and in at least once case, a shortage of fire hose to reach the fire.
A blow-by-blow account of the fire, with many photos, was posted on Lakewood Local, a news site serving the Orthodox Jewish community of Lakewood, New Jersey. The site reports that clothing stores in Monsey, where the yeshiva's students were visiting, opened late so the boys could buy clothes to replace the things they lost in the fire.
