Fire department marks 125 years of proud service

By JUAN l ASSo jlasso@liherald.com

“Who could stop the fire?”

For Valley Stream residents in 1898, that question no doubt weighed heavily on their minds as they watched Bergman’s Bakery, on Rockaway Avenue, go up in flames.

Without an organized fire department, there was no answer. No heroic intervention would come. The bakery was left to turn into a fiery furnace. Its engulfing flames burned for weeks on end “as a consequence of the coal which was stored in the cellar,” village historian Carol McKenna wrote in a village anthology documenting the event.

The devastation invariably served as a wake-up call to residents about the threat posed by unchecked fires, former fire chief Richie Sullivan noted. Now, the next pressing question was how this community

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