Inauspicious winds and fire-friendly conditions fed a fierce, early-morning blaze on Sunday, May 19, that nearly destroyed a four-story office building at 333 North Broadway, on the Jericho-Hicksville border. Jericho firemen are calling the fire, which is under investigation by the Nassau County Fire Marshal's Office and the Arson/Bomb Squad, the area's biggest and most involved in at least a quarter of a decade.

Frustrated, anxious employees of about 35 small businesses located within the building have not been permitted to re-enter the building, which suffered severe damage to its southernmost side. Workers, some extremely anxious to salvage material trapped inside, have been turned aside as the investigation proceeds and the building is secured.

Investigators received an early break when a witness, who was driving his girlfriend home along Route 106/107 early Sunday, confirmed to them that small flames were originally coming from a plastic container located just outside of the building, on its northern side. He had alerted the Jericho Fire Department at approximately 3:36 a.m., but by the time the first trucks from Engine Company 944 arrived, the building was fully engulfed in flames.

With the origin of the fire already confirmed, investigators must now determine whether the initial spark from within the container - likened to a plastic trash can - originated from a careless mishap or an act of malice. Contents inside the four-foot square container are currently under investigation.

A seemingly innocuous dumpster fire can quickly burgeon into a disaster if the conditions are just right, and in this case, all the elements were there. According to the investigators, the old building fails most of today's current fire safety standards. It contains no alarm system or sprinklers, and parts of its structure are composed of flammable materials.

Gusty winds blew from north to south, making matters worse as they pushed the flame and heat from the plastic container directly into the building. The only condition that was favorable, said Jericho First Assistant Chief Ginzburg, was the time. "Fortunately, nobody was in the building at the time," Ginzburg stated.

The fire from the container was making contact with the ceiling of the building's ground-floor parking garage, which is made of Styrofoam. "It's like putting a log on a fireplace," said Detective Hall of the Arson Squad. "If you get a Styrofoam coffee cup...and light a match into it, it burns with thick, black soot," explained Hall.

The ceiling easily caught fire and spread, with the whipping wind blowing the worst of it to the opposite side of the building. This explains why the south side bore the most damage even though the fire was ignited on the northern side.

The driver who first witnessed the fire said that had he been carrying an extinguisher, "he could have put it out," according to Hall. "But because of the way the wind was blowing and the way the Styrofoam was being burned, it grew very quickly," Hall continued.

The building's first floor features several offices and the parking garage, the second and third floors offer additional offices, and the fourth floor is a penthouse.

On the south side of the office, the heat was so intense that it twisted steel I-beam supports into "S" shapes and snapped the girders, causing the floors to collapse. The rest of the building remains structurally sound, but suffers from tremendous fire, smoke and water damage.

Dennis Nallendro of First Alert, the company overseeing the securing and structural inspection of the property, said that despite appearances, the building is salvageable. "Only on the south side the steel has been violated," he said. He estimated that it would take nine months to a year to have the building ready again.

Nevertheless, that's a long time for business owners and employees to be displaced. Among the businesses sharing the building address are accounting firms, law firms, a travel agency and a Fox Channel 5 Long Island Bureau office.

First Alert is attempting to allow a small number of business people to return to their offices to collect valuable software, files and data. "We will make arrangements as soon as [everything is] safe," said Nallendro. "The insurance company doesn't want any tenant to go back in an unsafe building."

As for tenants on the building's south side, said Nallendro, "Those floors have collapsed. They'll never go into their offices again, ever."

The fire also did damage to the adjacent building, a Big & Tall clothing store located just south of 333 North Broadway.

The firefighting operation required manpower from six departments - Jericho, Syosset, Hicksville, Plainview, Carle Place and Westbury - and five more were kept on standby. There were 27 trucks and 100 men on the scene.

The fire was brought under control in about three hours. Initially, under the command of Jericho Fire Chief Richard Schiraldi, firemen entered the burning complex, only to witness the building's steel supports twist like a pretzel.

"We were beginning to see the structural damage that was developing," said Ginzburg. "When that was witnessed, we made the decision to pull out. We just felt it was not safe enough."

Employing a different approach, firemen on four tower ladders blasted the building with massive streams of water from the exterior. Once the flames were controlled, the firemen would later have to re-enter the complex to extinguish small pocket fires that remained in hard-to-reach areas of the building. The nine-hour operation was completed by midday.

A 13-year department member, Ginzburg could not recall a bigger fire in his district. "I've spoken with guys who have been here 20, 25 years, and this was the bggest by sheer size of the structure and the amount of involvement," Ginzburg said.