The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City

Dec 21, 2013 @ 7:30pm

With the author Joe Flood.
The one thing people continue to remember about the Bronx is its devastation through the fires in the 1970s and 1980s . The area was documented on celluloid— the opening shot of Paul Newman’s movie, Fort Apache, the Bronx, was shot right outside the Bronx Music Heritage Center’s door. In fact, when you’re here at the BMHC Lab, you’re just a black away from Charlotte Gardens, the stretch where Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter were photographed walking through rubble which reminded everyone of the aftermath of a World War II bombing and from which they showed the world the Bronx’s problems. Now the area has seen incredible revitalization. Tonight we discuss how some of this came to pass.
Joe Flood is the author of The Fires, a nonfiction account of how New York City’s economic planning, political climate, and an attempt to bring cutting-edge computer modeling to government led to the city’s 1970s fire epidemic and fiscal crisis. The book was named an Amazon Book of the Month and won a Bronx Recognizes its Own (BRIO Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts. He has written about New York City, sports, finance, and politics for publications like New York Magazine, the New York Post, and Buzzfeed.com, and also works as a teacher
and college archery coach on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.